Six Weeks
by Feeney
Summary: After Yamatai, Lara's doctor sentences her to six weeks of rest without strenuous activity. Sam is determined to keep her best friend safe from the temptation of adventure, but sometimes the adventure is not what what they expect. Lara/Sam. COMPLETED!
1. Day 1

**DAY 1**

* * *

Lara lay back on the examination table, shirt pulled up and jeans unzipped, so that Dr. Kimura could peer at the healing wound on her abdomen. She was glaring at me so hard that I could _feel_ it, but I didn't know what she was so annoyed about.

I'd filmed her in much more awkward situations than this back in school.

"Does this feel tender here?" Dr. Kimura asked, prodding gently around her surgical incision.

"No," Lara lied. I could see her wincing through the four-inch LCD on my camera.

"Liar," I declared. I ignored whatever withering look she was giving me and turned to Dr. Kimura. He was one of the finest surgeons in Japan and had a ton of degrees framed on his wall, but only I was certified in Lara's macho bullshit. "It hurts when she puts pressure on it. Like, she can't really lean forward when she's sitting down. I also notice her cringing sometimes when she walks up a lot of stairs."

Dr. Kimura looked at Lara over his tiny crescent-shaped glasses. "I see. Miss Croft, you have to be completely honest with me if I'm to help you make a full recovery. When did the tenderness start?"

Lara shifted uncomfortably. "I don't really know when it started...because it hasn't really _stopped_ since the surgery."

"And I've told you a hundred times that it's because you refuse to take your pain medicine," I reminded her, pulling the bottle from my purse and shaking it. There was exactly the same number of oxycodone pills in it as when I'd first filled the prescription for her ten days ago.

"Sam."

Dr. Kimura frowned at her. "I see. At least tell me she's been taking her antibiotics three times a day."

"Yes, she has," I answered for her. That, at least, Lara admitted she needed. She would be twenty-two in a few months, but when she was stuck at home on doctor's orders, it was like taking care of a constipated toddler. She was a stubborn little pain-in-the-ass.

"And I don't suppose you've been resting at home and avoiding all moderate to vigorous activity like I asked you to?"

"Pshhh. Doubtful," I said, thoroughly comfortable with ratting out my best friend in front of her doctor. I still remembered the horrifying way she'd stumbled onto the docks after we came off the rescue boat. The blatant infection in her stomach wound had started to bleed through her tank top. Watching her fall, after all we'd been through, was the scariest thing I'd ever seen in my life. They had rushed her into emergency surgery, flushed her with antibiotics, and kept her in the hospital for nearly two weeks. Then, she had to have a _second_ follow-up surgery. When they finally deemed it safe to discharge her to my family's mansion outside of Tokyo, I slept in her room for a week just to make sure she kept breathing.

Lara had better believe I was going to tell this doctor anything and everything I could, if it meant she would be okay.

"Isn't there a rule, no one's allowed in here unless they're a relative?" Lara complained.

"She told us she was your wife."

I smothered my giggles in one arm as she sputtered wordlessly, using my other to make sure I was getting it on film. No one would believe I got the brooding and serious Lara Croft to look so flustered, if I didn't record it.

"She is _not_ my wife!" she cried, blushing so furiously that the pink spread down her neck.

"Well, then we can ask Miss Nishimura be dismissed from the exam room, if she is disturbing you."

I batted my eyes at her innocently.

"Oh, she finds ways to disturb me no matter where she is," she grumbled. I stuck my tongue out at her playfully. "Let's just get on with this. Yes, I've been having pain. No, I haven't been taking any of my pain medication. Yes, I've been...performing moderate to vigorous activities."

Dr. Kimura looked over at me. I shrugged and raised an eyebrow at Lara.

"I actually don't know what she's talking about. I've been making sure the most strenuous thing she does is take walks in the park."

"If by 'park', you mean 'Shibuya Fashion Mall _'._ "

" _You_ were the one bitching about sharing my clothes," I pointed out. When she first came to stay with me at my father's place for her recovery, she would just borrow my clothes. That arrangement lasted maybe two hours before she started complaining about her boobs spilling out of my 'outrageous' necklines and her ass hanging out of my 'criminal' miniskirts. "I got you all the blue tank tops and black v-necks you wanted, didn't I?"

Dr. Kimura was looking back and forth between us, probably wondering if we were _sure_ we weren't married.

"Anyway, I would have expected the swelling to have gone down a bit more, if all you've been doing is walking." He prodded at Lara's incision again. "I...ah, I didn't want to mention this before so as to avoid any uncomfortable situations but… I would have thought it goes without saying… Miss Croft, you really should be refraining from any sexual activity during your recovery."

Lara jerked up, cringing in pain at the motion. I put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down forcefully.

"I'm not!"

"For once, she's telling the truth," I said, rolling my eyes. "I could barely even get this girl laid _before_ the whole Yamatai thing."

Dr. Kimura pursed his lips. "Forgive me if I am disinclined to believe you. Miss Nishimura, I must insist that you not engage in sexual activity for the next few weeks."

I scowled. "Wait, what? Why can't I have sex? Dr. Ozaki said I was fine, as long as I continue to see my psychologist once a week!"

Lara groaned. "He's talking about _us_ , Sam. He's saying you can't sleep with _me_."

I blinked. "Ohhh. Well, okay."

"What do you mean _okay?!_ " she demanded, that vein in her neck bulging hilariously. "We are not - we _don't_ \- what are you even - ?! _"_

Keeping a face so carefully straight that I should have gotten an Academy Award, I looked Dr. Kimura dead in the eye and said, "I will stop having sex with Lara."

"I don't _\- she doesn't -_ we're not - ! _"_

"Good," he said. He got up and started to polish off his little glasses. "I'd hoped most of this inflammation would have resolved by now, but I can still remove these sutures. I just need to grab a few things from my office first. Excuse me a moment."

He left, and the minute the door closed behind him I dissolved into a fit of uncontrollable cackling. Actual, literal tears sprung in my eyes. My stomach cramped.

Lara was not nearly as amused.

"Sam, you insufferable little...little _wanker!_ "

"Shhh, don't talk about wanking. Dr. Kimura just told us to cool it!"

" _Sam!"_

I was gasping for air at this point, Lara looked so scandalized. She was always so guarded about her sex life that even I, her best friend and the person that knew her better than anyone else in the world, never got any steamy details.

"I'm so glad I got that on tape," I wheezed, checking the camera to make sure the mic was working. Jonah was going to _love_ this tomorrow when we saw him tomorrow. Reyes would too, but she'd love it secretly and pretend to think we were crazy. "Oh, my God. The expression on your _face_."

"I'm glad you're enjoying all this," she huffed.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said, coming around wrap an arm around her shoulders and give her a kiss on the forehead. "I'll stop. You know I can't help it when you're being a prude."

"I'm not a prude." She scowled. "I just want a little privacy, especially now that we're all over the news. It'd be nice if there weren't any rumors going around that I had a _sex injury_."

I thought I was done giggling. I wasn't. Lara waited impatiently for me to stop.

"Okay, okay, I'm done." I managed to say between hacking. "Damn it. Okay, I'm good."

"And would you please stop filming for once? Jesus, Sam, this is a _doctor's visit_ ," she said, struggling to get into a sitting position. She swiped my camera from my hands. Lara had only ever done that once to me before, and that was in college when I used her jump drive and accidentally deleted her thesis to make room for a video of me teaching drunk Brits how to Dougie.

I was definitely in the doghouse.

"You...didn't say anything before, when I started the camera."

"Why should I have to tell my best friend to _not_ record this?!"

I sheepishly reached over and switched the camera off. Over the years it had gotten to the point where a camera was basically an extension of my eyes and ears, and since Lara was the person I spent the most time around, it was only natural that she be the subject of nearly everything I shot. But when she said it like that...

"I'm sorry," I said sincerely. "I honestly...I film you all the time, I just didn't think. I'll delete the tape."

Lara sighed heavily. "It's fine. No matter."

"No. Really. I'll delete it," I said, taking back the camera and pointedly putting it down on the metal instrument tray. "That was stupid. I was just...I was having fun and I didn't think about how you felt about. You know how I get carried away."

"I do know," she said. "That's why I let you, and it was fine at first, but then the inappropriate joking started."

My brow furrowed. She was actually blushing again, which I thought was strange. People joked all the time about us being so close we were practically married. Her usual reaction was to roll her eyes and say something along the lines of 'God help me if _that_ were true'. At what point had that stopped being funny? When did it start being inappropriate?

"Don't delete the tape," Lara said suddenly, reacting to whatever face I was making. I must have looked pretty put-out. "I'm sure I'll find it funny at some point. In a future that is not right now, right here in the doctor's office."

I thought she would have. That was why I had brought the camera along in the first place. I had hours and hours of footage dating back to the day we met, many of them featuring a grumpy Lara Croft. One of our favorite things to do was to watch those videos months later and laugh, poking fun at ourselves. Lara was a serious, bookish, and mature, but she was also always secretly a big happy dork.

I hoped that wasn't one of many things that changed after Yamatai.

"Maybe we should stop those long strolls of ours," I said, switching the subject. I couldn't stand this thing we did sometimes, where we'd work up to something resembling a fight, but then back down before anything really got heated. It was worse than actually arguing, all build-up and no climax. "I didn't realize just walking was messing with the healing process. I guess it's more strenuous than I thought."

"It's not."

"Well, you're still all swollen there," I pointed out. I gently touched the tender skin around her stomach and the muscle almost seemed to recoil on contact. "Oops, sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"No."

It sure seemed like I had. She hadn't grimaced, but she had pulled away pretty quickly. "Okay, well, maybe we'll go on shorter walks."

"Walking isn't the reason the swelling hasn't gone down, Sam."

I looked at her curiously. Lara was purposefully avoiding my gaze, a sure sign of guilt.

"Then what is?" When she didn't answer, my eyes narrowed. _"Lara."_

"I've, erm...well, I've been sneaking into the Tokyo shipyards."

"What?!"

"At night after you went to bed I'd climb out the window, to avoid activating your mansion's burglar alarms - "

"You'd _what!?"_

" - and sneak into the shipyards, where they're keeping all the artifacts we managed to collect from Yamatai. I've just been getting a headstart on cataloging them, is all. They just won't let me access the cargo until it arrives in London with us and, you know, the customs department is being all sorts of unreasonable about it all."

I gaped at her.

"I mean, they haven't even told me which artifacts are staying in Japan and which we're bringing to the British Museum. What if they're categorized incorrectly, or sets are separated, or something breaks?"

"You're serious," I realized. Lara was actually that crazy, although I guess I'd always known that. I'd known since we were first years and she'd decorated her dorm with tarnished relics instead of empty ale bottles and Christmas lights, but it was always bewildering to actually see her particular brand of crazy in action.

"Er, yeah. I guess all the climbing and moving crates did some harm. There was also that time my shirt got caught on the top of that chain link fence and…" She trailed off at my expression. "Never mind."

I moaned in disbelief. " _God_ , Lara, even when you're an acrobatic ninja superhero, you're just the biggest fucking nerd about it."

She grinned slightly. "So you're not angry?"

"Of course I'm angry!" I cried. She blanched. "Are you kidding?! Lara, I'm _infuriated_ with you! You're an idiot!"

Since the minute we stepped off the boat, I'd never left her side. I was there every step of the way, except for when they'd had to pull me away from her stretcher so they could wheel her into the operating room. Lara had always been there for me, _always_ , ever since we were just lonely first years wandering the UCL campus. We had each others backs all through our time there, and got a flat together in London after graduation. Even when she told me she'd gotten a job on some dinky old ship, I followed her. I'd follow her anywhere, and she'd do anything for me. That's just how we were.

So when she pulled shit like this, lied to me so she could put herself in danger without my knowing about it, I got royally pissed off. This was _totally_ worse than filming her at the doctor's office.

"You could have hurt yourself," I hissed. "You just had two major abdominal surgeries, are you fucking kidding me!?"

"I'm just...restless, Sam. And I feel helpless. Pointless, almost."

"That's ridiculous," I scoffed. "You're the archaeologist who solved one of the world's greatest mysteries. You saved all our lives. You're a hero on so many levels, I can't believe you don't realize this!"

The world was singing Lara Croft praises. Historical societies and universities were throwing money at her from all directions and she had developed a cult online following online. Nishimura Entertainment was nearly finished developing a documentary about her and Yamatai, using what little of my footage they could salvage. She was being added to textbooks, she had a Wikipedia page, she was even getting some kind of newly discovered grass species named after her. She was beautiful, badass, and had that killer accent. People _loved_ that.

Sure, there were skeptics. Particularly about the ancient sun queen trying to shove her soul into my body and the giant stormguard ogres that tried to kill us. If I hadn't seen it myself, I would have called bullshit on us too. Especially since all evidence had disappeared without a trace after Lara destroyed Himiko's remains and dispersed the storms. That whole thing was mostly unclear, but it seemed that all the supernatural stuff had been tied together, and when Lara destroyed it's source, the whole thing went up in smoke.

The public was mostly ignoring that bit of our story, and when it became evident that no one would believe us, we decided to shut up about it, too. Everyone just chalked it up to mental and emotional trauma and focused on Mathias and the Solarii as the bad guys.

But it was still a triumph. Yamatai was still Yamatai, the centuries-old legend suddenly turned real, and Japan in particular was all over it. There were boatloads of valuable artifacts being excavated from the island, not to mention the new mystery of the Solarii cult that people were already starting to write conspiracy theories about. Lara was a legitimate celebrity in this country, and no doubt it would be the same when we finally got back to London.

"I just feel like there's more out there," Lara insisted. "I know there is. More than just Yamatai. My parents dedicated their lives to unravel these mysteries and everyone just scoffed at them. Myself included. Why do _I_ get to reap all the rewards?"

"Lara…"

"It's all true, Sam. All those things my father said and his colleagues deemed nonsense. Those myths about gods and magic. He was onto something, and I owe it to him to find out what it was." She cringed, clutching her stomach and laying back on the exam table. I jumped up to help her, but she just waved me off. "But I can't do anything because of _this_. This is the most frustrated I've ever been!"

"You're saying you want to do all that stuff _again?_ "

"No, no," she shook her head. "Not exactly, anyway. I'd be more prepared, have all the equipment I needed. I'd be able to use my...skills more effectively. And I wouldn't put you in danger."

"Just yourself," I said dryly.

She sighed. "I can take care of myself."

I had heard her, back on the rescue ship that brought us to Japan. When the first mate told her she'd be home soon, I'd heard what she had murmured to herself.

 _I'm not going home._

A chill had run down my spine because I knew she wasn't just saying that. This was about more than adventure, now. Lara Croft had always seemed to be waiting for something. She wasn't like our other friends. Even when she agreed to come out and have fun with us, when she took all those odd jobs to pay for school, when she humored me and attempted to try dating, it always seemed like she was just biding time until something bigger came along. All the hikes we went on, all the trips we made around the world. It was just her looking for that something.

Then Yamatai showed her the way. Lara had become part of a world bigger than she could have ever dreamed. This was what she had been waiting for all along, and I knew she would never come all the way back to me.

But the part of her that did, the part of her that was still here with me, I wasn't ever going to let go of that.

"Well, good luck trying to get rid of me." I smirked. "You need to have someone along to document all your groundbreaking discoveries!"

"Sam, I already have too much death on my conscience. I don't even know what I would have done if I'd lost you too."

God, she had even dropped her head backwards on the table melodramatically. I had to smirk and roll my eyes.

"Oh, would you please stop with that? Seriously."

"I know you still have nightmares," she said quietly.

That shut me up for a little bit. They weren't as bad now, not since I'd started seeing a therapist, but I would still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night sobbing. I didn't have to run across the hall to the guest room anymore, though. I no longer had to make sure Lara was safe in her bed, no longer had to find her wide awake too and crawl beside her just so she could hug me. I was already better, even though I still never felt completely okay unless she was near. When Lara carried me down that mountain in her arms, that was the safest I ever felt in my entire life.

I didn't know she could still hear my sobs.

"Yeah, well, you have your scars. I have mine," I replied gently, looking at her wound. "Therapy is really helping me. It'd help you too, if you actually went. Stubborn ass."

A hint of a smile. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit. _I'm_ fine."

"No, you aren't."

"I'm like, ten times finer than you, at least!" I declared. She laughed. More seriously, I said, "You saved me. You always seem to forget that. _You saved me._ "

"Did I?" she challenged. "I can't even stop you from crying at night. After everything I've done, I can't even help the person that matters to me most."

"Lara," I squeezed onto the exam table and embraced her as tightly as she could tolerate. "Shut up. We're not having this conversation again. It only ever goes in circles, anyway. I don't blame you for anything, and no matter what that stupid brain of yours says, that's the bottom line."

She rested her head on my chest and took a deep breath. I let her lay there for a moment before speaking again.

"Don't forget I'm still angry at you for breaking out of my house and sneaking into the shipyards without telling me, just so you can fondle a bunch of old horse statues and ceremonial fans or whatever. Super angry."

"I just feel like everything is being taken out of my hands. After all that we've been through, everything is just...gone," Lara admitted. "When I'm holding the artifacts, I can say 'At least I did this. At least I made a world-changing discovery. At least I made some kind of difference'. But now that everything's being scattered, and tomorrow Jonah's going back to New Zealand and Reyes to New York, I feel like...all I have left is the bad things. The bad memories. All the killing, Himiko, Mathias, the Oni, losing Roth, Grim, Alex, and even Whitman. The blood and gore and fire and - "

"You still have me," I interrupted, putting a hand on her cheek. "At least you have me. At least you saved me. At least I'm not a reincarnated demon queen. You can still say that."

I could feel her smile into my shirt.

"Say it, Lara."

"At least you're not a reincarnated demon queen."

"There you go. Now take your damn pills, I feel like it's gonna hurt when he pulls those stitches out."

She snorted, pushing away the bottle I was trying to give her. I knew this was just her stubborn ass punishing herself for what happened. No matter what anyone said, she was going to shoulder that entire burden until the day she died. She couldn't even forgive herself for me, and I actually came out alive with minimal injury.

Time heals all wounds. That's what my therapist told me about my nightmares, that's what the doctors told us about Lara's injuries, and that's what I hoped would eventually happen with all the guilt Lara felt.

"Dr. Kimura is taking an awfully long time," she said.

"Maybe all that talk about the two of us sleeping together made him need some alone time in his office to cool off."

"Ew, Sam."

"What? We're hot as hell."

" _Sam."_

I wished that we could stay like this forever. Well, maybe not _exactly_ like this, in a doctor's exam room sitting on a paper sheet as Lara lay with a long wound exposed on her abdomen, but somewhere nicer. A beach, maybe, or even some big old library. As long as I got to be with her, and she wasn't running off chasing myths and legends trying to leave me behind. I knew she was serious about not putting me in danger, but for some reason she couldn't understand that concern going both ways. If I ever lost her…

I realized with sick satisfaction that I was _glad_ she had to suffer two extensive surgeries and would be sidelined for basically the entire summer. It meant she was safe and stuck here with me. At least until the doctor cleared her for activity, I had some peace of mind.

Suddenly the door opened and Dr. Kimura came in, holding a small suture removal kit. He gruffly eyed Lara and I, cuddled together on the exam room table.

"Don't forget what I said about not having any - "

"We won't bloody forget what you said!" Lara rolled her eyes and I snickered.

"Or else this will never heal," he said threatened. I hopped off the table and gave him room to do his work. "You need to take it easy for at least six weeks, all right?"

"Okay! Jesus!"

I held up my camera, searching Lara's eyes for permission and found it in a slight nod and exasperated smile. Grinning, I let it roll.

"So, Dr. Kimura, can you repeat that one more time so I have it on film?"

He looked up at the lens, his face all stern lines and seriousness.

"Miss Croft is not allowed to exert herself with any strenuous activity for _six weeks_."

"And a verbal confirmation?" I prompted Lara.

"I will wait six weeks before throttling you for this," Lara said sourly as Dr. Kimura snipped the first suture.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** After finishing up the Tomb Raider comic series I just felt like things should have gone differently, so this happened. Anyway, obviously this isn't compliant with the Dark Horse comics series, and probably won't jive all that well with the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider either._


	2. Day 5

**DAY 5**

* * *

Lara was in bed, nose buried in some ancient tome that was probably spraying all sorts of mold and spores into her lungs. Off to the side was her ipad, with some kind of strange writing on the screen, and a sketchbook with the same alphabet and some crossed-out attempts at deciphering it.

 _Ugh._ Four days after her visit with Dr. Kimura and she was already looking ahead to her next unsolved mystery. She was wearing the same clothes as she had been last night, which meant that she'd been up all night doing this. I quietly tried to figure out what it was she was reading, so I could get an idea of what she was up to, but it was pointless. I could only hope she would share it with me when she was ready.

Lara chewed at her pencil, deep in thought, and I couldn't help but be endeared. She was being so adorably and determinedly geeky that I just _had_ to disturb her little bubble of calm.

"I notice you're wearing the same clothes from last night," I said abruptly, waltzing into her room.

She grinned at me. "Well-spotted. Nothing gets past you."

"So...who's the guy?" I teased. "Must be something if he had you out all night long."

"You know there's no guy."

"Handsome, I bet. Centuries old and weathered, rusty around the corners, but the Japanese inscription still readable on the back?"

That got a laugh. Lara snapped her book and sketchpad shut and sat up to make room for me on the bed. I casually reached out for the ipad, but she quickly closed the browser and the weird alphabet disappeared.

"All right. What is it you want, Sam?"

I flopped down next to her and sprawled myself out. Lara rolled her eyes and stroked my hair idly, as she tried to find space on the nightstand to set her stuff. It was too piled high with archaeology junk, so she just tossed it on the rug.

"You know, living with you is what I imagine having a cat to be like," she said, as I got my head comfortable in her lap. "Inconveniently getting in the way of my reading, taking up all the space in the bed, and almost always reliably pooping in a designated area."

I snorted. "So, what were you researching all night that's so secret you won't even let me take a look?"

Lara's hand stopped in my hair. I wasn't always so blunt with her, but it worried me when she kept secrets. Especially now, not even a month out of Yamatai, when we needed our best friends the most.

"Cuneiform," she admitted finally. "Before we left on the Endurance I'd been archiving my parent's work, particularly my father's. I uploaded everything I could in digital form and now that I finally have the time to look through it…"

"What's cuneiform?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"It's the most ancient form of script dating back as far as four millenia BCE, in ancient Sumer," Lara explained, suddenly animated as she turned her ipad back on. She was always pleased to lecture about ancient gobbledegook and even though I had only a mild interest in some of it, I was always happy to oblige. Especially if it meant she was opening up to me. She showed me a picture of a really old, flat piece of stone with the strange alphabet on it. "It's almost like pictographs, you can see, it has a very distinctive bar or wedge-shaped form of lettering."

"Okay…"

"The reason it's like that is because cuneiform originated in a time when everything was carved and etched into clay tablets or stone."

She grabbed her really old book and opened it. I could practically _see_ the bacterial organisms coming off it.

"Strange, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I guess this is just what it feels like to breathe in a rotavirus?"

"I mean the _writing_."

"The whole thing is in cuneiform," I realized, pulling my shirt over my nose.

"That's right. And this journal is from 1902, my father found it in his travels. Why, nearly 2 thousand years after cuneiform was phased out of existence, is someone writing it in a journal?"

"Maybe he's a bigger dork than you."

Lara grinned, but continued. "Not only that, ancient Sumerian has been largely deciphered since the mid-1800's to early 1900's. I should be able to find at least a minimal translation for this, but it's pure nonsense. The characters used are clear, but the words they form don't make any sense."

I let the dramatic pause run as long as I could before patting her cheek mockingly.

"See? Was that so hard to just tell me?"

She rolled her eyes. "I wasn't hiding it from you."

I gave her a look.

"Fine, I was, but only because I knew it would bother you, that I was already diving back into new research." She was stroking my hair again. "I figured you might think I was that much closer to diving back into the field, and you'd worry."

"What I worry about is you hiding things from me," I said seriously. "If you don't share stuff with me...I mean, your father had some people his side. You need someone on your side."

"Even if it involves old historical junk?"

" _Especially_ old historical junk," I said. "Because I get to film it and turn it into a documentary."

Lara smirked. "Of course. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much exceptional camera footage would help me with this. I was going to give Alister a call this afternoon."

Alister Fletcher was one of our friends back in London. We all went to UCL together, although he was a bit older, a 28 year old genius working on a PhD in ancient history after already earning Bachelor's and Master's degrees in archaeology and anthropology. The man wouldn't rest until he completed his History Trifecta of Nerdhood. He was basically Lara in six years, except I could never picture him embarking on international expeditions, and I could no longer picture Lara being something as innocuous as an academic.

He was also the one guy Lara ever slept with, although that confession took a wild amount of vodka to squeeze out of her. It was obvious what drew her to him, even if 'skinny beanpole blonde with thick plastic glasses' wasn't exactly someone I thought was Lara's type. Even though that relationship didn't last, for whatever reason, they remained very good friends. I had teased Lara relentlessly about it when he ended up being her TA in her final term, turning the entire thing into this hilariously cute and sordid affair between student and teacher.

They hadn't been a couple for a year, but bringing him up was the _perfect_ segue into what I had originally wanted to say when I first came into her room.

"Speaking of your scandalous affair - "

"No one was speaking about that!"

" - with your professor turned _loverrrr_ \- " I continued.

"We ended that relationship _before_ he ended up being my TA!"

" - back in jolly old London, I was wondering what your feelings about that were."

She was bright red and it was delightful. "We haven't been together for nearly a year! We're just friends!"

"Not your feelings about _Alister_ ," I snickered. "Although, wow, defensive much?"

"Get out."

"I'm talking about your thoughts on _London_. This morning I spoke to Dr. Kimura."

Her eyebrows shot up. "What? Why? About me?"

"Obviously about you. He's not _my_ doctor."

"Why are you talking to my doctors about me?" Lara demanded. "Also, why are they giving you all this information? Does patient confidentiality not exist in Japan?"

"I just tell them I'm your wife."

She groaned and gave me a shove off her lap. "You _really_ have to stop doing that!"

"I just needed to know if you were okay to fly in an airplane," I explained, reaching into my purse and pulling out a squashed envelope.

"What is that?" Lara was shying away from the envelope like it was full of snakes. I slapped her on the arm repeatedly with it until she grabbed it from me. She opened it and her eyes widened.

"Tickets to London?!"

"We're going home!" I crowed. Frankly, I expected more of an overjoyed reaction, but Lara just looked confused. She was scrutinizing the words on the tickets, like they had some kind of hidden meaning in them other than 'Terminal C, Gate 4'.

"I thought I had to stay put for six weeks? Doctors orders, remember?"

"I asked Dr. Kimura, and he said you can go as long I give you this," I pulled a plastic package from my purse and held it up. It contained a small syringe needle containing forty milligrams of some kind of blood thinner that I had Dr. Kimura fax over to the pharmacy. "And I had him send over a referral to a doctor in London who can do your follow-up care."

"What _is_ that?" She eyed the syringe like I was pointing a gun at her.

"It's so you don't get a blood clot that travels to your lungs and kills you on the plane."

"Well, that sounds...lovely."

"It's easy. I YouTubed how to give injections, it'll be fine!" I insisted. I opened the plastic package and Lara scrambled away from me, alarmed.

"Whoa, whoa, wait, you _YouTubed_ how to give shots?!"

I shrugged. "Well, how else am I supposed to learn these kind of things?"

"I don't know, nursing school!? Medical school?!"

"Oh, relax, Croft," I rolled my eyes. "YouTube is great. That's how I learned how to save battery life on my phone and do proper contour makeup."

She looked stricken. "Let me see it, I want to make sure you don't accidentally make me hemorrhage from every orifice."

" _Gross_ , Lara." I let her take the package and read it carefully. "Come on, I know you want to go home."

We'd been in Tokyo for nearly four weeks now, although most of that time had been spent in the hospital. After Jonah and Reyes left for home, I knew she was getting a little stir-crazy. Especially after the house arrest I imposed on her when I found out she was sneaking into the shipyards. It wasn't like Japan was new to her, she'd been here to visit with me, gone on excavations with Roth and her parents, and done the tourist thing a ton of times over the years. Now that she'd discovered Yamatai, there were virtually no stones left unturned in this place. No more new adventures. She was getting bored, already onto the next thing with her weird cuneiform book.

"We don't have to go back to London yet for my sake," she said finally. "I'm fine here, Sam, if you want to stay a while longer."

That was a lie. I'd be the first to admit my father's mansion was an incredible architectural feat of modern style and classic Japanese influence. Being the heir to a multimedia fortune had that advantage. The downside was that my father was always away on business. He'd been around for that first week after being rescued, to make sure I was okay and that I was being looked after. He wanted to check on Lara too, since he always liked her. But when it became clear that we'd be fine, he dumped a ton of money in our laps and flew off to the States for a meeting in Hollywood to promote the Yamatai documentary.

The international media storm resulting from our Yamatai discovery was giving his company a field day. What little video footage I captured was apparently just as valuable as any of the gold relics we brought with us. Nishimura Entertainment was developing my footage as quickly as it could while Yamatai interest was still high, and my father and uncle were scrambling for copyrights and all sorts of other legal things to keep coverage under their umbrella. They left with barely a pat on the back and a "job well done".

It wasn't exactly new. It was the story of my life. But being alone in a huge mansion just made everything that much more uncomfortable. I was getting just as restless as Lara. We needed our normalcy back.

"I don't need to stay here," I told her.

"But when your father and uncle come back - "

I scoffed. "When they eventually come back, they'll be too busy to notice whether or not we're even here."

Lara pursed her lips. She never dared say it, but I knew what she really thought of my family. It had been different for her - she'd lost her family, but every single one of them loved her without a doubt. I had a father and uncle who did care about me to some degree, but were too busy with work to acknowledge it, and a mother that barely remembered that I existed.

"I think we'll both be better if we just went back to London," I insisted. "I even got a freelance job with the BBC. Mostly editing and reshooting local news shots, but it's something."

"That sounds nice."

It did not, but it was a start. Until the Yamatai documentary was released, my professional history wasn't all that impressive. I shrugged.

"Honestly, it doesn't matter what I'm doing. Living in London with you was more a home than I ever had here, or anywhere else my family shuffled me around."

The look on Lara's face was unreadable. Anyone else would have assumed she was staring at me blankly, but I'd known her too long to think that. There was always something going on in that head of hers.

"What?" I waved my hand in front of her face. "Hello?"

She shook her head. "Sorry, I just...me too."

"You too?"

"I mean, living in our flat in London is the only home I really had since my parents died," she said softly. She still had that odd look in her eyes and whatever it was, I guess it made her self-conscious. She looked away.

I raised an eyebrow, but didn't ask. "Right. Anyway, I know you've been getting bored here. Tokyo isn't some cool exotic place to you, and there's nothing for you to climb or excavate or battle to the death - "

She smiled.

" - so let's just go home. Real home. London. We'll heal better there, don't you think?"

"Yes. I think we'd be happier."

"And we'll see our friends again," I added. Our four years at University College London were the longest the two of us had ever stayed in one place. It was the first time in our lives that we managed to make friends, with each other and with a small group of other students. Alister and the others - Zip, Naya, and Amanda - were all wonderful, and they had all decided to stay in London after graduation. They had been texting us frantically since news broke about Yamatai.

"Our friends..." Lara echoed, but I saw the darkening of her eyes. No doubt she was thinking about the friends we'd lost on the Endurance.

"We could be gone by nightfall!" I said brightly, trying to snap her out of it. Our flight was for eight that evening, which I'll admit was mildly impulsive, but Lara should be used to that kind of thing from me. She shook her head at me, amused.

"We have like, a week left on the lease for our flat and never renewed it," she laughed. "Where exactly are we going to live?"

"Oh, right. No, it's fine. I bought a townhouse."

She froze. "You _what?!_ "

"A townhouse," I explained. "At least, that's what they're called in the States. I don't remember what they called it in London. A terraced house, I think? You know, a row of houses all stuck together with a cute little stoop out front - "

"I know what a - you bought a _house?_ How do you just _buy a house!?_ "

"Um, I'm rich?" This was far from the weirdest thing I'd ever done. I didn't understand why she was staring at me with such disbelief. "I closed on it before we left on the Endurance. I mean, I plan on living in London for a while, and I know you prefer a small place in London to your parents' old mansion in the country. So why not? There's three bedrooms, for you, me and the other will be for when Jonah visits or if Reyes ever decided to take her daughter on an English vacation or something. Maybe we'll come across Amanda shitfaced in the streets and she'll need a place to sleep."

Lara's mouth had dropped open, and she wasn't making any noise.

"It's a cute house," I continued, unsure of why I was carrying on this conversation alone. "It's super-old, from like the 1700s, so you'll be happy with all the dusty crap lying around. I even know which bedroom you'll pick when you see it - it has an actual _reading nook_. I didn't even know that was a thing until the agent told me. As soon as I saw it, I could picture you all curled up in there with all your gross fungus-y books and ancient scrolls or whatever."

I could tell she was trying to form words now, so I waited.

"So...so hang on, let me get this straight," Lara said slowly. "The timestamps on these tickets say you bought them at 7:32 AM. I know you had to have called Dr. Kimura today, because he wasn't in his office all weekend, and his office doesn't open until 9. So you bought these tickets first, for a flight this evening, without even checking with me or my doctor. Then you went the the pharmacy to pick up a blood thinner and researched online how to stab me with it so you could fly me halfway around the world to a house you bought for us to live in? _All before 10AM?!"_

"A house for _me_ to live in," I corrected playfully, booping her on the nose with a finger. "You're just coming along because otherwise you'd be homeless."

"Oh, of course!" she said hastily, a dark blush spreading across her cheeks. "Of course, it's your house. I'll be paying you rent, obviously."

"Obviously. I'm not a sugar mama."

"Right."

I giggled at how flustered she seemed. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was a little high on her pain meds, she was being so strange. I reached out and hugged her to me.

"What's the matter with you, lately?" I released her and moved her bangs from her face. They were getting pretty long, starting to get in the way of those big brown eyes of hers. When we got to London, I'd need to trim them for her.

"Nothing. Nothing, I'm just…" Lara exhaled a deep breath that I hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "Thank you, Sam."

"Don't mention it." I brandished her syringe. "Now pull up your shirt. The internet said this has to go in the subcutaneous fat of your belly, which is going to be harder to find than Yamatai was."

Lara was being adorable again. "You have an alcohol pad to wipe the skin off first, right?"

"Would you relax? I told you, I YouTubed this!"

"That's not nearly as comforting as you think it is, Sam." But she pulled up her shirt anyway.

Just as I suspected, there was little fatty real estate to speak of. The extensive scar on her belly took up a good amount of room, too. Common sense, plus the terrified look on Lara's face, told me that I probably shouldn't stick it anywhere near there. The rest of her was mostly smooth, lean muscle covered with soft, creamy skin. It was in stark contrast to the skin of her arms and legs, which had gotten tan and firmer from exposure. I didn't realise I was staring until she cleared her throat loudly.

"Sam?"

I shook out of that weird funk. "Sorry. Sorry. I, uh, okay. I'm going to do it right...there."

Lara adjusted herself and the sight of her bare torso wriggling on her sheets made me pause again.

 _What the actual hell._

"You know, I could probably do it myself, if you're nervous," she said, holding her hand out for the syringe. "You've done enough already for me, after all. Just tell me how."

"Shut up," I said quickly. "You carried my ass down a mountain. Least I could do is stick you with a needle. Just...stop moving, would you?"

She did and I opened up an alcohol wipe. The internet said that for people with little body fat, it would be all right to pinch up an inch of skin and inject the blood thinner in there. I just had to be careful not to get it into a muscle, or else it would absorb too quickly. And there certainly was more muscle on Lara than anything. Really nice muscle.

"Sam…"

"I've got it," I snapped and just wiped off a random spot about three inches away from the bottom of her scar. Then I pinched up the soft, white skin there and pierced her with the needle before I lost my nerve. When she didn't scream in agony, I pushed the plunger down until the syringe was empty. So far so good.

I pulled the needle out and Lara suddenly screeched.

" _Ahhhhh!"_

" _Oh my God!"_ I screamed "Oh, my God, oh, my god, _ohmyGod!_ I'm sorry sorry I'm _sorrysorryyy!_ "

I had thrown the needle to the floor and was already starting to dial an ambulance when I realized Lara was in hysterics, laughing at me.

"L-Lara?!"

"Oh, my goodness." She was laughing so hard I saw tears. Actual, real tears of mirth. "I'm sorry, Sam. You just looked so concerned, I _had_ to take the mickey out of you."

"You're...okay?" My heart was still pounding out of my chest.

"Of course. You did fine. I was just kidding," she sniffed and coughed out one last chuckle. "Sorry."

It had been so long since I'd seen Lara laugh like that. Months, probably. She was never a practical joker, but when the rare opportunity presented itself, she couldn't pass it up. I was never prepared, and no one ever really believed me. Fourth year, when I had that obsession with sriracha and she secretly put it in my morning tea, none of our friends believed that brooding, serious Lara Croft would ever do such a thing - it was more realistic that I would _set my own mouth on fire_. I was the only one she was ever comfortable joking with, it was my cross to bear.

But if it meant I got to see her like this, I bore it proudly.

"I hate you."

"I know you do," she smirked. "Sam, thank you."

"You said that already," I said, hopping off the bed to pick the needle up off the floor. YouTube had said if you depressed the plunger hard enough a plastic protector would pop up and shield the needle from any accidental sticks. It did.

When I turned back, Lara was standing right behind me, so close that we almost knocked foreheads.

"Lara…?" Suddenly her arms wrapped around me in a strong embrace. I almost didn't want her to let go, except for the fact that she was wearing really old clothes from yesterday and she hadn't showered yet. "You smell gross."

She laughed.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** The friends Sam mentioned - Alister, Naya, Amanda, and Zip, are all characters in Tomb Raider Legend/Underworld. They're only gonna be vaguely similar to the characters they are in the games. Also, "Naya" is actually Anaya Imanu, I just couldn't stand that all of Lara Croft's friends start with the letter "A" so Anaya gets to have a nickname :-P_


	3. Day 11

**DAY 11**

* * *

Lara scoffed loudly.

" _Nonsense,"_ she muttered into her champagne.

We were at the grand opening of the Yamatai exhibit at the British Museum, where she was the last-minute guest of honor. When the Museum learned that Lara Croft had returned to London early, they stopped at nothing to get her to attend. It was a whole big thing, with a press junket, a cocktail hour, hors d'oeuvres, and a brief guest lecture.

We even arrived by limo and were greeted with roaring applause. Literally everyone was falling over themselves to shake her hand. She was pulled back and forth by professors, TV executives, archaeologists, and other enamoured fans. Within the first hour she already had six lectures lined up at six different universities across Europe, plus another few in other countries when she was well enough to really travel. News networks flocked around her, trying to get whatever inside scoop they could get.

But Nishimura Entertainment was handling the TV coverage of _The Tomb Raider_ , and it was my job as resident Nishimura to shoo away some of the more overzealous folks trying to get her on their talk shows or weasel more information out of her than she was contractually permitted to share.

Plus, I got to film this whole shindig to add on to the documentary.

"What was that you said, _Tomb Raider?_ " I made a face behind my brand new video camera as I focused it on her.

I'd managed to force her against her will into a beautiful, slinky dress that hugged her shape, and we were all benefiting from my genius. She was gorgeous, _beyond_ gorgeous, in that forest green silk I'd gotten her. The thin gold accents gave it a vaguely regal, Asian feel, but the slits up both sides that showed off her shapely legs and her sleek ponytail made her look less like an empress and more like a Goddess of the Hunt. I'd chosen the perfect jewelry for her as well, pale gold bracelets and earrings that didn't distract from her natural beauty, and I let her keep the jade necklace that Roth gave her. It all went together so perfectly.

She looked at me and I was actually struck breathless for a moment. Lara Croft was a _knockout_.

"I said this is nonsense," she repeated. "I went through all the trouble of cataloging the artifacts and they still have the inros mixed with the ceremonial fans and masks. Inros were daily use items, they were basically wallets. Just because they're ornately carved, doesn't mean they should... _ugh_. I hope the exhibit in Japan will at least make some sense. Honestly, the English can be so tiresome when it comes to foreign artifacts."

I pretended to roll my eyes. "I know, right? White people are crazy."

She gave me a dazzling smile for that one. "You're half white."

"Tell that to my teeny little Asian boobs."

"Are you really talking about your breasts with the camera rolling?"

"I can edit that out."

She smirked. "Well, make sure to edit out the part where I call my own people tiresome, as well."

"Oh, no," I shook my head. "You looked stunning as you said that. I'm not editing out any shots of you in that dress."

I saw a flash of hesitation on Lara's face before she recovered and said, "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were flirting with me, Sam."

It was my turn to hesitate. Lara was rarely one to throw teasing back at my face, although I did notice that her champagne glass was nearly empty.

"I don't need to flirt, you know you want me."

"Oh, I _do_ ," Lara smirked. "Teeny boobs, skinny arse, and all."

She raised her glass in a mocking toast and I had to laugh, despite the weird tingling feeling I was getting in my stomach. I wanted to throw back some clever retort about her own body, but came up short. She was perfect, perfect shoulders, perfect arms, and those amazing legs that went on for days.

 _Wow._ I had admittedly hit the juice long before this whole museum affair started, maybe it was just all the champagne. That would explain why I hadn't been able to tear my eyes off my best friend and her plunging neckline all evening.

I started becoming acutely aware that a lot of time was passing and I had not yet responded to her teasing. I'd inadvertently made it awkward. Entire seconds were ticking by and I didn't know what to do. The last thing that was said between us was about my boobs and butt. I flicked off the camera.

This was weird now. Oh, she was looking at me funny over her champagne. Uh-oh.

"What are you doing?" I found myself saying hastily. "I thought you weren't supposed to drink until you finished your antibiotics."

She shrugged. "I'm invincible, haven't you noticed?"

"Lara…"

"All right, all right, sorry," she admitted. "I needed _something_ to get me through this schmooze-fest."

"That's it. No more," I said firmly, taking the glass from her and drinking down what was left. She snorted.

"Oh, that's rich, coming from _you._ " She was having absolutely no problem keeping up our banter. I was floundering. It was usually Lara standing around flustered, not me.

As I struggled for another response, I caught four familiar faces appear in the corner of my eye. _Thank God._

"Speaking of nights out getting roaring drunk - "

"No one was speaking about that."

" - guess who I managed to swing invites for your big night." I nodded over her shoulder and she turned around. That dazzling smile popped up again as she saw our friends from UCL approach.

"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed. "Alister! Zip! Naya! Amanda!"

The four of them rushed us with tight hugs and kisses. The last time we'd seen any of them had been shortly before Yamatai, but the last time the six of us were all together in one place had to have been just after graduation, three months ago. I watched Lara as they all gaped at her outfit, grinning to myself. She looked so happy to be home. Coming back to London early had been a good call.

I could almost imagine she'd want to stay here.

"It's all Sam's fault," Lara complained, indicating her outfit. "She brought home about twenty dresses and made me try on each one. This was number sixteen."

Zip elbowed me and whispered. "A-plus, Sam. Goddamn, I didn't think two people could look so good after being trapped on an island fighting a cult of lunatics."

Naya pinched him hard. "We promised we wouldn't talk about Yamatai in front of them, you _git_."

"Oops _."_

My brow furrowed. "This is the grand opening of the British Museum's Yamatai Exhibit, I think you're allowed to talk about Yamatai. Lara's going to, during her lecture."

Zip cast a sideways glance at her. "We weren't going to bring up...you know. The _bad_ stuff."

Naya looked at me apologetically. "We knew it was hard, and you're both still recovering from...whatever trauma you experienced there. We only wanted to talk about the archaeological mumbo-jumbo. That's what this night is supposed to be about, after all."

After everything that had happened, I had started thinking that the only people I could count on were Lara, Jonah, and Reyes. We had been through a lot, and I suppose survivors just got that mentality. Us against the world. But the fact was, we had only met the crew of the Endurance about a month before setting sail. That was, astonishingly, only two months ago. Lara and I had known Alister, Zip, Naya, and Amanda for _four years_. Even if we had emerged different people after Yamatai, they were still our friends. They knew us before, and we had to hold tight if we wanted any connection back to who we used to be.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

Naya patted my arm. "You're welcome. If you two want to talk about it, we'll be here. Until then…"

"It's _archaeological mumbo-jumbo_ time." Zip grinned. He and his girlfriend were my additions to our little group. Naya was a mechanical engineering student, and Zip was a former New Yorker like me, who had gotten his Masters in computer science. The three of us met on the first day of CS-101, and we just clicked. Zip was the funny TA that had the class dying laughing about three seconds in. Anaya was in my year, the motherly fresher that called him out on his shenanigans because she was actually there to _learn_. They were the classic odd couple and both of them were total nerds, but at least they had active social lives outside of their passions and knew how to have fun.

Unlike Lara, Alister, and Amanda. Those three were already in deep discussion about ancient Japanese artifacts and whatnot. I made a show of rolling my eyes, at which Zip and Naya both chuckled.

"Why are these inros here with the ceremonial objects?" Alister was asking. I noticed he was actually wearing contact lenses tonight, and looked a good deal more handsome without those heavy black glasses weighing down his face. I wondered if Lara was noticing, too.

"I was just complaining to Sam about that…" she was saying.

"And I'm sure Sam knew exactly what you were talking about," Amanda said jokingly, shooting me a wink. I was taken aback for a moment, but quickly stuck my tongue out at her. Amanda was another friend in Lara's field, a 26-year-old with multiple advanced degrees in archaeology and history.

But they had actually met through me - the morning after what was supposed to be a curious one night stand with a girl I'd met at a pub. I'd woken up after my first sexual experience with a woman and was just about to tell my roommate Lara about it, when I found them together in the common room having tea and talking about legendary Japanese emperors.

It had been kind of disorienting. Someone who I'd only meant to experiment with ended up being one of my best friend's colleagues. We never slept together again and never dated, because we just didn't have that much in common outside of sex and Lara.

Now it seemed that was _too_ much in common, because she was looking at Lara in a way that made me wish I'd dressed her in a potato sack.

"Sam's listened to me talk about all this so much, I'm sure she can get her own degree in archaeology by now," Lara grinned at me. I returned it.

" _Inros were daily use items,"_ I squawked, in a high-pitched parody of Lara's whining. She playfully poked me in the rib and Amanda laughed.

"Still, something as insignificant as a three hundred year old wallet would fetch a pretty penny to the right buyer," Amanda said thoughtfully. "More than a six hundred year old Noh mask, if it was carved ornately enough."

Lara made a face. "These are historical and precious, Amanda. Not things to be sold for profit."

"Oh, of course not…"

A pushy professor from Durham suddenly stepped between us.

"Miss Croft, if I may ask you a few questions…"

Before any of us could say anything, she was swept away into another sea of academics and lost to us. It was almost time for her introduction of the Japanese artifacts, so I grabbed a vodka cranberry from the open bar and motioned our friends to follow me into the BP Lecture Theatre.

Alister hung back to babble excitedly at Naya and Zip, leaving Amanda with me.

"Lara looks amazing tonight, Sam," she said. "You did an amazing job on her."

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. "It's what I do."

She seemed completely oblivious to my dour expression. Amanda Evert was obscenely attractive, especially in that little black dress that had to have been cutting off circulation in some places. At least half a dozen men were gazing at her the exact same way she was gazing over at Lara.

I was glad Lara was being distracted by all these people to notice.

"Yes, well...wow."

"I think you're drooling."

Amanda smirked at me. "Oh, don't be _jealous_. You're outrageously sexy like, all the time. Let other people get ogled, for a change!"

She linked her elbow around mine and pulled me closer. I felt a cool chill shoot to my center and gently increased the distance between our hips. It had been a very, very long time since I'd last gotten any, and I'd already had a lot to drink. I knew what Amanda was like, and I knew what I was like. I didn't want to make any mistakes tonight.

To make me feel better, she gave me in my blue dress a quick leer.

"There, see? Totally into you, as well."

I had to chuckle. "You're an idiot."

" _You_ slept with me."

"Four years ago!" I laughed. "God, am I that hard to get over?"

She waggled her eyebrows playfully and I bumped her away, snickering.

The lecture hall was already packed, and despite knowing how big a deal Yamatai was, I was surprised to see almost every seat of the 323-person capacity auditorium filled. Luckily, my status as a Nishimura secured all of us seats in the back. It was raised, so it gave the best view of the stage for my footage. I ushered them into the middle of the row and started to set up my tripod behind them. Normally I preferred avoiding static shots from tripods, but there was no way I was going to miss watching Lara's first big speaking engagement live.

"So, how have you been?" Alister asked, volunteering to hold my camera and help me assemble the tripod.

"Pretty good, considering," I said, unpacking the equipment. I set my drink down on the floor so I could work. Alister picked it up and held it for me, ever the gentleman. "Therapy's done wonders. I only wish Lara would agree to go."

"Still stubborn as a bull, is she?"

"Even more, if that's possible," I said dryly. "But at least she's healing physically. In a few weeks, she'll be fully cleared by her doctors and able to travel again."

"That girl can't hold still, can she?" Alister smiled. He had turned my camera on and was watching my footage from earlier in the evening during cocktail hour.

"No. I'm worried she'll go rushing off to the next big adventure before she's ready," I sighed, tightening a support rod underneath of the the tripod's legs. Sometimes I wished she were more like him, the bookish, research-y kind of archaeologist.

"She may not be the stay-at-home type of girl, but I can't imagine she enjoys being bombarded by all these people," he said, watching a video of a really old historian literally throwing aside his rolling walker just to join the throng of people crowding Lara. "She's always been the quiet thinker type."

"I know. Those musty old professors were _swarming_ ," I said. "Although she is lining up a lot of guest lectures. That should occupy her enough while she's still recovering. Makes me less worried she'll do something stupid like run off too early."

He nodded. "If anyone could keep Lara safe, it's you."

"I just wish I could actually get at her, you know? They're orbiting her like she's the _sun_." I tested the strength of the tripod and, satisfied, celebrated by taking my drink back and topping it off.

"Right? Everyone knows she's _your_ sun."

I nearly choked on my vodka cranberry. I coughed and quickly grabbed a napkin so as not to get red juice speckled down the front of my pale blue dress. It was too late for the Alister's tweed blazer with the elbow patches, though.

"Aw, come on, Sam."

"What do you mean, _my_ sun?"

He grinned and showed me the footage he was watching. The volume wasn't on, so I didn't hear any audio, only the video of Lara walking. Lara leaning over to inspect a cracked vase. Lara laughing politely at some bad joke. Lara looking at me with the teasing expression. About fifty different views of Lara moving around in that unholy dress.

"Is this documentary going to be about Yamatai, or Lara's cleavage?"

"Give me that," I snatched my camera away from him, flustered. "She's the guest of honor. I'm _supposed_ to film her."

"And those slits up the side of her dress."

" _Alister,"_ I snarled.

"Hey, hey, I'm just saying," he held his hands up defensively, but I could see the laughter in his eyes. "The camera drifts down away from her face a lot."

" _Ugh_. I am not drunk enough to talk to you yet."

"I'm sorry! I'm just kidding!" he said, although I didn't think he was. "Here, let me set up your camera for you."

"I'm getting another cocktail," I said grumpily.

"Sam, wait," Alister said quickly, grabbing my wrist. "I truly was just kidding. Besides, Lara and I are ancient history, so to speak. Just friends. I don't want you thinking - "

"I'm getting another cocktail," I repeated, pulling away and making my way back to the bar. When I returned with a new vodka cranberry, Lara had rejoined the group.

"What happened to your jacket, Alister?" she was asking.

"Sam's drunk," he replied pleasantly.

"Oh, okay," she said, as if that was just, like, the status quo or something.

"Hey," I protested, but I didn't really have much else to add to that.

Lara grinned at me. "I should go. I need to be on stage in ten minutes. Wish me luck?"

Everyone did. I wrapped her in a tight hug.

"Go get 'em, _Tomb Raider_."

I watched her go and chugged the last of my drink, feeling the familiar warmth in my ears. I made some last minute adjustments to the camera, panning it back so that it showed the whole stage and not just Lara's amazing body and the way it looked in that dress. Then I sunk into my seat with my friends and joked about how many of the men in the audience were trying to hide their boners.

Her lecture was maybe fifteen minutes long. Amanda and Alister hung onto every word with genuine fascination, and I managed not to suspiciously watch Amanda's gaze. Zip and Naya listened politely, although I could tell their interest in the history of jade-carved horses was minimal. So was mine.

But I was riveted. Lara looked shy at first, but after a few minutes at the podium under the lights of the stage, she began to shine. They say one is never as beautiful as they are when they're talking about something they love, and that definitely held true for Lara. Ancient Japanese artifacts were her _thing_. If it were anything else in the world she had to talk about in front of all these cameras and people, she would have dug a hole in the center of the stage and died in it. But up there, speaking passionately about coins from the 17th century Edo period, she was the queen.

Too soon, I heard the applause and realized Lara was done. The evening was coming to a close, and other than a few people loitering to get a few last glances at the relics, the hall was starting to empty.

Alister and Amanda were in a deep discussion about Lara's lecture, and it wasn't long before a couple other historians joined their debate. Naya, Zip, and I headed to the bar for one last celebratory cocktail before it packed up.

"How are you two getting home?" I asked before handing them their gin and tonics.

Zip nodded over at Alister. "Our new place is only a few blocks from Amanda's flat, and Alistair is nearby, too. He's designated driver for tonight, since you _know_ all he's had was a seltzer water."

"You and Lara are the outliers." Naya smiled as she took their drinks. "When can we finally see _Casa de Sam y Lara?_ "

The House of Sam and Lara. It had a nice ring to it. Especially when Lara finally started calling _our_ house and not just _my_ house. It had taken a while, but I think she felt better about it after she forced a security check and first month's rent into my purse.

"Whenever you want," I said absently. Lara was finally coming over to see us, after practically having to beat away her admirers. Everyone gave their congratulations and complimented her on the public speaking skills none of us thought she actually had.

"Well, thanks for not telling me beforehand that you all thought I would crash and burn," she snorted, taking my glass and getting a good whiff. She gagged. "Sam, I could smell the alcohol wafting from your _pores_."

"Classic Sam," Amanda joked. I scowled at her.

"You know, I hate to run," Alister glanced at his watch. "But I have a deadline for tomorrow morning that I really should deal with."

"And I have that job interview," Naya sighed.

Zip cringed. "Oh, God. Is this what it's like to be old?"

"That's quite all right," Lara assured them. "It's a Thursday, I'm honestly just pleased that you lot made an appearance at all! Thank you so much for coming."

We made plans to properly celebrate, and then disbanded. Lara guided me back to the limo, which had been booked for a round trip, and eased me into the back. I was having a surprising amount of trouble maneuvering myself, although I had to admit it had been a long while since I'd drank that much.

It was a longer drive in the traffic than we anticipated, so I rested my head on Lara's shoulder.

"Our driver looks like the hobbit version of Simon Pegg."

She smacked me on the arm. _"Sam!"_

"Oh, relax, he can't hear us. The partition is up. We could be going at it back here like rabbits and he'd have no idea about it."

I didn't bother looking up, enjoying being pleasantly wasted and curled up next to her, but I felt her squirm a little.

"What?" I asked, squeezing a little closer when I felt like she'd shifted away from me a bit. These leather seats were so slippery, it was like we were sliding apart with every little bump. I practically had to hold her in place.

"Nothing." Lara hesitated before asking, "How many drinks did you have tonight? Will I be holding your hair away from the toilet when we get home?"

"Possibly," I murmured. "You?"

"I'm okay. Antibiotics, remember? I just had the one, I don't think we'll have to fight over the loo."

"Well, that's why I got a house with _two_ toilets."

"Right. You bought it for the toilets," Lara chuckled.

"And also for you," I said, closing my eyes. Oh boy, this buzz was heavenly. "I walked right up to that real estate agent and was like, 'Find me the oldest, crustiest house you've got and make sure there's something historical about it'."

I waved my finger in the air in front of us, as a demonstration of how firm I was with the agent. Lara was weirdly quiet. I nuzzled her shoulder with my cheek, trying to prompt a response out of her. Why wasn't she talking?

"And it is, isn't it? Isn't it the most disgustingly crusty house you've ever seen?"

I never had to look at her to know I had drawn a smile out of her. I felt it.

"Oh, Sam. You didn't have to do it, but that was very sweet of you."

Suddenly I felt her warm hand grasp mine. I hadn't realized I had rested it on her thigh. Some of my fingers had even found their way into the slit in her dress. I was touching skin.

It was almost a sobering moment. Almost.

"But is it crusty enough?"

"Yes. It is the crustiest house in all of London," she said. I felt her lips on the side of my forehead. "You're the best, Sam."

I grinned stupidly. "Lara, oh my God. You looked so hot tonight."

"Well, I suppose that's all thanks to you," she insisted, giving my hand a squeeze. Then all of a sudden my hand was moved away, no longer in contact with the warm skin of her leg. "You looked amazing tonight as well. Every eye was on you."

I giggled. That was dumb. Everyone knew Lara was the most beautiful woman in the universe. And I would fight anyone who thought different. Even her.

She moved my other hand, which had somehow wrapped itself about her waist, onto my lap. That was kind of funny. So I laughed.

"Wow, Sam, I should have had Alister keep a closer eye on you and the bar tonight," she said hesitantly. "Honestly, on a scale of _First Year Midterms_ to _Final Year Pub Crawl_ , how drunk are you right now?"

"Mmm...I think I'm at least an _Oktoberfest_ , bordering on _That One Night In Belize_."

"Yikes."

I looked up at her for the first time and saw that she was blushing furiously.

"You're pretty."

She looked away, out the tinted windows of the limo. "I think we're almost home."

I impulsively grabbed her chin and pulled it back to me. She looked afraid. How could she be afraid? I was her best friend in the whole world, and she was mine. We were together, which was the absolute safest place either of us could ever be. It made no sense.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Of course."

I noticed that I could feel her breath on my lips. I blinked a couple times and my eyes focused a little better. Yeah, Lara and I had gotten pretty close. No wonder I could smell the minty freshness of the gum she'd had before we left the museum. I bet she could smell all the vodka cranberries I'd had.

The thought made me giggle again. Lara smiled uncertainly.

"Sam, what are you laughing - ?"

She was so uptight and nervous for some reason. I had to relax her. Keeping my grip on her chin, I gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Except, I kind of missed her cheek.

Our lips touched and the feeling was enough of a surprise that I pulled away and was ready to apologize. But then I saw Lara had her eyes closed, and her mouth slightly open, giving her lips that insanely attractive puffy look that apparently drove me to do crazy things.

Like kiss my best friend.

Before Lara had the chance to realize I pulled away, I dove right back in. I heard her gasp into my mouth as I kissed her, pressing my lips hard against hers and cupping a hand on her cheek. One of her hands tangled in my hair and when she tugged it slightly, I almost hissed with pleasure.

Oh, God. Oh, _God._

The limo stopped. My eyes popped open. In a millisecond, we had shot away from each other on opposite ends of the seat. The partition began to roll down.

"End of the line," Hobbit Simon Pegg announced. "You girls all right?"

"Yes," Lara squeaked.

"I am _spectacularly_ drunk," I said, for some reason.

"Er, okay. You two have a good night."

I launched myself out of the limo, too embarrassed to even look at my best friend, with whom I had just shared a world-changing kiss. If I could just get to my room and under the covers, maybe Lara would believe I was too wasted to remember it the next morning. Maybe this would just disappear. I just had to get away.

I stumbled and landed face first on our front step.

"Sam!" Lara leapt after me and inspected my face. "That's going to bruise. Let's get you some ice."

She had to practically drag me up the steps and drop me onto our couch. I just sat there, thinking about how I had royally fucked everything up between us.

Oh, God. _Oh, God._ Of course Lara wouldn't freak out. _I_ was the freaker-outer, that was _my_ job. Lara would just withdraw from me awkwardly, find ways to avoid me. She would think I was crazy and, _oh God_ , I didn't even know if she - I mean, she knew I'd had sex with lots of guys and a couple girls, but the only person _she_ ever slept with was _Alister_. That guy wasn't the finest specimen of masculinity ever, but he was all sharp angles and tallness and scruffy chin hairs. Definitely a male. Lara was as straight as an arrow. And I had kissed her.

 _I just kissed my straight best friend._

"Here, put this on your lip," Lara held a bag of frozen vegetables to my mouth. I took it from her and leaned away, ashamed.

"I'm fowwy," I said. My lip was starting to swell and I could not think of a single moment in my entire life that was worse than this one. "Lawa, I'm fo fowwy."

"It's okay," she said quickly. It would have been more convincing if she was actually looking me in the eyes. "It's okay. You're pissed as a parrot. It was an honest mistake."

"I made tings weiwd."

She looked hesitant, but when she finally spoke she sounded self-assured, despite still determinedly looking everywhere but at me.

"You didn't."

" _Lawaaa."_

She dragged her eyes up and I tried very hard not to look like a crazy person trying to stuff a bag of frozen peas in her mouth. At some point she must have decided that I was the most pathetic thing she had ever seen in her life, because she smiled at me. It was a wistful smile, maybe even a little sad, but at least it was genuine. Better than nothing.

"Nothing will ever be weird between us, Sam. You're my best friend." She paused. "Except for the fact that your lip looks sort of like a bratwurst. I suppose that's rather weird."

" _Ugh."_

Lara put an arm around me and squeezed. "Don't worry. Let's just go to bed. You won't even remember this in the morning."

She was wrong. I remembered the hell out of that limo ride. But I woke up with a fucking bleeding sausage where my mouth was supposed to be and all I wanted was to make sure she didn't hate me. I steeled my resolve and went down to breakfast looking as pitiful as I possibly could, hoping to use sad puppy points to my advantage.

Lara was predictably sympathetic to my plight and handed me a brand new ice pack, explaining how I had fallen on the steps the night before. She seemed under the impression that I was so hammered I didn't remember anything.

I wasn't, and when she left out the part where I kissed her, I didn't bring it up.


	4. Day 17

**DAY 17**

* * *

" _Where could my father could have found this?"_

I sleepily padded out of my room in my underwear and listened from the top of the stairs. I could hear Lara and Alister talking in the living room, along with the familiar clink of tea mugs and rustling of Jaffa cake wrappers.

" _I haven't the foggiest, but what I wouldn't give to get this translated…"_

It was eight o'clock on Saturday fucking morning. Of _course_ Lara had Professor Tweedpants over to discuss ancient relics and artifacts. Why wouldn't she?

I opted not to join them downstairs, partly because I wasn't wearing clothes and that probably would have been rude, but also because I didn't have the strength in me to lecture Lara about Jaffa cakes for breakfast _again_. Neither of us could cook, but I at least had the sense to order in or eat out when I got hungry. She would be completely happy with living on pre-packaged foods for the rest of her life. I never quite understood that, how a posh British girl who had a butler and a mansion could become this rough and tumble survivor whose diet consisted exclusively of high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, and fancy English tea.

As I stood in the upstairs hall contemplating the charmingness of Lara's eating habits, I suddenly felt two cold hands grip my waist. I cried out in surprise and swung a fist before I even know what was happening. Luckily, Amanda was as quick as Lara. She dodged my blow easily, but let me shove her in annoyance, giggling all the while.

"Sam!?" Lara yelped, hearing my shout from downstairs. " _Sam!_ "

"It's okay, it's fine!" I called, trying to slow my heart rate, but she was already sprinting up the stairs. When she arrived she glowered at Amanda, who held up both hands in surrender. It was then I noticed she had Lara's ipad tucked under her arm.

"I was just playing around!" she said. "Jesus, are you two jumpy!"

"I said you could grab my ipad from my room," Lara said angrily. "Not wake up Sam!"

"She didn't wake me up," I said, although I was still glaring at her too. Of course we were jumpy. We had a reason to be jumpy. Amanda was lucky Lara didn't come running with her bow or she'd have an arrow through her eye socket.

I heard Alister's clunky footsteps come up the stairs.

"Everything all right? It sounded like...oh…" He stared at me and pulled off his glasses to polish them on the hem of his shirt. "Oh...good morning, Sam."

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. "I'm going to shower. Everyone can go back downstairs and talk about Lara's mysterious cuneiform book now."

Amanda raised an eyebrow. "You know about it?"

"Of course I know about it," I snapped, although I admittedly didn't know a whole lot. None of us did, I didn't know why I was being so defensive about it. Maybe I was just tired of feeling like the dumb one of the group. "I've been helping her research and filming the whole process."

"She knows just about everything _we_ know," Lara said proudly.

"Which is to say, nothing," I clarified.

"Basically," Alister said. He was wringing his fingers nervously and I realized he probably wasn't all that comfortable with me standing around in my underwear. Although to be fair, I was totally fine with it and this was _my_ house. "However, I do know a fellow at the University of Dubai who may have some insight…"

Lara looked at him excitedly. "Can you email him?"

"Of course. I think I have his contact information saved somewhere. He was one of the advisors during my study abroad and he was always very helpful. Werner Von Croy was his name. Let me see…" Alister seemed to completely forget about me, rushing downstairs to check his phone. Lara practically snatched the ipad from Amanda and raced after him eagerly.

I cast a glance over at Amanda, who hadn't joined their little archaeological parade.

"Not interested?" I asked dryly as I made my way back to my room.

"Oh, I am," she said distractedly. "I mean, I was. But now I'm more interested in something else."

It was then that I realized she was looking at me. As in _looking_ at me. I turned to face her and saw that she was gaping openly from my door.

Amanda Evert was gorgeous. There was a reason I had slept with her years ago as an adventurous first year, and it wasn't just the prospect of being with a slightly older, super-experienced lesbian. She had the look of a classic bombshell - all shiny blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and a body like Lara's in that it boasted a jealousy-inducing mix of lean muscle _and_ curves. She was also intelligent, ambitious, and bold, wearing a tiny black tank top and combat boots practically all year round to maintain that tough girl street cred. Her numerous tattoos were mostly hidden under her clothes, just barely visible enough to tease anyone that was looking. I, of course, had gotten acquainted with every one of them, plus a couple surprise piercings.

She was just as attractive as the night I met her and took her home with me. For a first time, the sex had been surprisingly amazing. Amanda was easily in my Top 5, and it had only been that one time.

At least, so far it had only been one time.

"I just woke up," I said, my mouth gone dry at the expression she was giving me. "My...my breath is gross and I haven't showered."

It had been a very, _very_ long time since I last got laid. Pre-Yamatai, and that guy from the pub had been pretty mediocre despite practically being able to see his abs through his shirt. Since then I'd been mostly focused on the _Tomb Raider_ documentary and my job at the BBC, taking care of Lara, and watching out for my own mental health. I hadn't had much time for going out or anything.

"Sam, does it look like I care?" she asked, coming into my room. Her eyes lifted themselves from my breasts and she grinned at me. "For old time's sake?"

Oh, god, she was beautiful. She reached out and stroked the insides of my arms gently. I felt the tingle travel straight to my core.

" _Lara,"_ I found myself blurting.

"She and Alister won't notice a thing," Amanda laughed. "Don't worry. They've both got such raging archaeology hard-ons over that cuneiform, they won't even realize we're not with them."

That wasn't what I had meant. But she had her hands on my waist now, pulling me closer. The skin of her flat abdomen peeked out from underneath her tank top and I could see the round bump of her navel ring poking through the black fabric, as well as the bottom feathers of the hawk tattoo I knew she had around it.

"Look, we know we aren't into each other _that_ way," she said. "I'm not worried about your feelings or whatever. We both just know how to have fun without all the strings. We're friends that don't need to worry about that shit, you know?"

She was right. I never over-thought sex, unless the problem was I wasn't having any. I had more one night stands in my life than actual relationships, by far. And it was totally okay. If I hadn't found The One yet, why not enjoy myself until I did? That was just how I lived my life.

It was very different than Lara's take. She was a serial monogamist, which was only made more frustrating by the fact that she'd only ever had one boyfriend. It was a damn shame, really.

Our bare skin touched and even though her skin was smooth and cool, almost like glass, a heat seared through me.

" _Fuck,"_ I breathed into her ear. At some point her lips had started pressing against my collarbone. I was very quickly starting to lose it. Her hands reached around me and I felt them squeeze my ass possessively. I gasped, and she took that as invitation to kiss me.

I immediately thought of a few days ago, when I had kissed Lara. This was a whole other level. This had rubbing, gasping and nipping, this had more than a little grinding between our legs. Our hands wandered and clothes came off.

But I couldn't get Lara out of my head. How would she feel about this? All signs pointed to nothing. She _shouldn't_ care. Amanda was her friend and colleague, but it wasn't like they were in a relationship. She knew we'd already slept together before - that's how they'd met in the first place. Lara had witnessed me take home so many guys and girls through the years that she barely even batted an eye anymore. Sometimes, like in Amanda's case, she even made my fling some morning tea.

Amanda's hands ran up my back and a chill followed her fingers.

I had to scratch this itch. Amanda knew that's all this was, it was another reason we'd clicked so well that night. Neither of us ever wanted anything serious _._ None of this meant anything, other than soothing an ache I didn't even realize I had until I felt Amanda's cool fingers slide into my underwear.

God, maybe that's why I was so weird with Lara that evening at the museum. It had just been _such a long time._

I rotated my hips a little and bit my lip. The old, pre-Yamatai Sam would never have hesitated. Was I still that girl? I desperately hoped so. That girl's life was so much simpler, so much less confusing.

"Bed?" I whispered into Amanda's neck.

Her tongue flicked at my ear and my hips surged into her hand. She chuckled.

"No. Shower." She wrinkled her nose mockingly.

" _Bitch,"_ I laughed

"Come on," she pulled me into my bathroom. "And do try to be quiet. If you cry out like that again, Lara's likely to beat me up."

The mention of her name out loud gave me pause for just a moment, but then Amanda's hand found my breast.

I closed my eyes.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later we made it downstairs, fully dressed, hair blow-dried and makeup just right, trying to look as innocent as possible. At least, I was trying. There was virtually no way Amanda could ever be described as "innocent". She probably came out the womb with that smug grin of hers.

Alister seemed completely oblivious, typing at his laptop and murmuring to himself. Lara, however, was swiping stonily at her ipad.

I had been as quiet as I could manage, but I guess she wasn't _that_ naive.

"Any luck contacting Von Croy?" Amanda asked, shamelessly plopping down on the couch next to Alister and propping her feet up on the coffee table. Some of the papers they had strewn across it fluttered to the floor.

Lara rolled her eyes. "Watch it."

"Sorry."

"Were you going to clean those up or…?"

" _Lara!"_ My eyebrows shot up. She was _never_ rude.

"It's fine," Amanda was unphased, bending over to gather the papers. "I've got them. Here."

She stacked them neatly at the center of the table. Alister looked back and forth between her, Lara, and me, blinking owlishly.

"I, er - yes, we heard back from Von Croy," he said, turning the laptop towards Amanda. While she read the email, I looked at Lara. She seemed overly interested in whatever was on her ipad, so I just stood by the coffee table helping myself to a Jaffa cake.

It didn't make sense, but I suddenly felt like I needed to be invited to sit on my own couch.

"What were you two doing upstairs?" Alister wondered curiously.

"Just catching up," Amanda answered, immersed in Von Croy's message. She was utterly nonchalant about the whole thing. As casual as I was with sex, I never thought I could ever be _that_ aloof. I wasn't used to keeping it a secret, at least. Usually when I got laid I told pretty much everyone, because I never saw it as something to hide.

Now, for the first time, I felt kind of ashamed.

"Another cuppa?" Lara asked her curtly. "You let yours go cold."

Amanda felt a hand on the mug I assumed was hers. "It's okay, I'll just microwave this one."

Lara and Alister looked absolutely horrified at the thought.

"Oh, untwist those knickers, you two," she scoffed. "Tea elitists, I swear to God."

"I thought all you Brits were like that." I tossed out a joke, deciding I'd been weirdly quiet thus far.

Lara scowled, mostly at Amanda and largely ignoring me.

"You can't heat tea in the microwave! I'm going to put the kettle on." She set the ipad next to her on the couch, where I had just been planning to sit, and squeezed past to the kitchen without even looking at me. I watched her go, frowning.

"I'm gonna help her," I said finally.

I left Alister staring after us and Amanda looking over the documents on the table. In the kitchen, Lara was filling her tiny little kettle with water. It was impractically small, barely making enough water for the two of us, much less when we actually had company. I'd attempted to drag her into the 21st century with an electric one, or even just a regular-sized one, but she loved that old thing. It was from the Renaissance or whatever, which I thought made it even more disgusting, but she liked junk like that.

"You're angry," I said bluntly.

"No, I'm not."

"You're angry at me and Amanda," I corrected. She set the the kettle on the stove and started the burner. "Are you mad that we had sex in the shower?"

I could see her wince just from looking at her back.

"I didn't know that's what you were doing. I thought you were just snogging or something."

 _Oops._ Guilt burned in my stomach.

"Lara...we're not - "

"I have my own shower now. Frankly, I don't care what you do in yours."

I put a hand on her shoulder and gently spun her around. I was surprised to see the pained expression on her face.

"Lara - "

"Do you like her?" she interrupted. "I mean, I didn't realize you still thought of her like that. Have you been, I don't know, pining for her all these years and holding back for my sake?"

"Your sake?" I repeated, confused.

"I don't know, maybe you didn't want to make things weird between me and her," Lara shrugged, avoiding eye contact again.

"That's...completely..." I felt miserable. None of those thoughts had been enough to stop me. I'd just gone ahead and done what my suppressed libido told me to do. "I'm not into her, like, at all. It had just been so long, and I trust Amanda enough to scratch that itch for me, you know?"

"Right," she said bitterly. "Now that we've been back in London a while, I was wondering when you'd be tarting it up again - "

Her hands flew to her mouth in shock even faster than mine did. Lara had never, ever, said anything like that to me before. _Ever._

" _Wow,_ Lara," I said in disbelief. No other words were even coming to mind. _"Wow."_

She looked horrified. "Oh, my God, Sam. I didn't mean to - that's not - I'm sorry, I - !"

I sharply turned to leave, absolutely done hearing about her opinions on the matter, but she grabbed my wrist trying to pull me back.

"Let go," I grumbled through clenched teeth.

"Wait, Sam, please," she pleaded. Lara seemed just pathetic enough for me to give her another minute of my time.

"Spit it out. I've got a lot of _being a raging slut_ to do, you know."

She cringed. "You know I don't believe in that word."

"Being a _slag_ , then."

"Sam!" She was wincing, as if hearing it was physically stinging her. "You know I support you and everything you do. I always have and I always will. I never - you _know_ I don't care that you sleep around. Even if it's not my style, I'm happy when you're happy. You _know_ I don't judge women like that!"

I did. Lara was the absolute last person on the planet who would slut-shame anyone, much less her best friend. That was why it hurt so much to hear the word 'tart' slip out of her mouth, even if she was upset and not thinking.

"Why are you so upset about Amanda and I?" I demanded, tugging my arm away from her.

She paled and looked away. "I'm just...I don't know. Coming back to London has been...wonderful. It really has been. Life has started getting normal again, and I'm just...not sure I'm normal enough any more."

Lara leaned back on the counter and crossed her arms, still staring at the tile floor.

"I don't feel like I'm quite as _me_ as I used to be," she admitted. "And whenever I see you slowly but surely go back to being _you_ , I suppose I just feel a bit left behind."

I frowned. I hadn't expected that. Lara seemed to have been adjusting just fine to London life. She hung out with our friends, she did her guest lectures, she pored over old books and internet sites doing research. This was all standard Lara Croft.

But as I inched next to her against the counter and bumped shoulders, she looked at me and I could see the haunted look in her eyes. The restlessness. The sadness. Lara always had this innocent, almost prudish way about her. The proper, posh, English girl with her nose in a book. Now her nose was still firmly planted in her books, but I didn't get that vibe anymore. She wasn't innocent. She could go through all the motions, do all the things she used to do, but she wasn't herself.

I hugged her, whoever she was. It didn't matter.

"You're stuck with me, Lara."

She smiled a little. "Oh, goody."

"You know, I keep telling you about my - "

Lara groaned. "Yes, yes, you want me to go to your therapist. I get it."

"Do you, though?"

She stayed silent for a while, until her kettle started to whistle.

"If you _did_ like Amanda…"

I coughed. Loudly. _"No._ Her boobs are amazing and I can write sonnets about her ass all day long - _"_

"Okay, okay."

"But I do _not_ like Amanda like that."

She grinned and she turned the heat down on the stove. "Well, that's a relief. I wasn't sure if I could pull off threatening her."

"Threatening her?"

"You know, 'If you hurt Sam I will rip your spine out through your nose'. That sort of thing."

I felt a muscle in my cheek twitch. She was too busy with her kettle to notice me shift uncomfortably for a moment. The old Lara certainly wouldn't have pulled off a statement like that. After Yamatai, though...

"Nice one."

Lara shook her head and sighed. "The day that someone finally takes your heart, Sam, I promise I'm only going to get _more_ creative with my threats of violence."

She took the kettle in an oven mitt and brought it out to the living room. I watched her go silently.

"Great," I said to no one. Things would be fine between us, but the whole conversation had just left me so unsatisfied, somehow. _Ugh_. I grabbed the menu to the nearby diner off the fridge so we could order a breakfast that wasn't Jaffa cakes, and found the three of them huddled over Alister's laptop, reading something intently.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. Lara looked up, pleading at me with her eyes to go answer it. In response I tossed the menu at her forehead.

"Everyone order something," I told them as I went to answer the door.

It was Mrs. Robbins, the little old lady that lived across the street from us. She was a sweet woman, welcoming us to the neighborhood our first day after moving here with a fresh-baked pudding. Occasionally we would bump into her at the store and she'd coax us into buying lottery tickets and warn us about the sketchy passerbys on the street. Today, she held out a stack of envelopes.

"Samantha!" she greeted warmly. _"Ni hao!"_

She was also a teensy bit racist.

" _Er…"_ I heard Alister whisper from the couch. _"That's Chinese."_

Amanda snickered. Lara shushed them both. We'd told her I was Japanese, but it didn't seem to make any difference to her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Robbins." I smiled at her and took the envelopes. "Are these ours?"

"Oh, yes, I've been getting all your letters by mistake! I would have returned them to you earlier, but I've been away to visit my grandson for the past week. He's on summer holiday, you know. Little Howie turned twelve and he's gotten so tall!" she gushed.

"That's really cool."

"It was! At any rate, your post has just been piling up on my doorstep," she said. "It must be that new postman. I can't blame him, though, he's from Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan or some kind of -stan. He sounds like a Russian, but looks Oriental!"

Alister was squirming, just _dying_ to give Mrs. Robbins a long, stuffy lecture.

"But I'm sure he'll be fine. _You've_ learned tocommunicate adequately, after all."

I had spent my younger years in Japan, Portugal, and Brazil, but I had gone to an elite boarding school in New York since I was eleven and completed four years of university in London. I was fluent in Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and knew a good amount of conversational Mandarin.

But good to know I communicated adequately.

"Thanks for the mail," I said.

'Oh, love, it's called post. _Post,_ " she enunciated.

"...Thanks for the post."

She patted my cheek proudly. "You're very welcome. I'm surprised you young girls get any post at all, don't you do everything on the Face Books these days?"

"Kinda." I forced a grin.

"Well, don't throw all those away. One of them is marked as 'urgent' and 'time sensitive'," she warned. "Have a lovely day, Samantha. _Zai jian!_ "

She put both her hands together and bowed to me. I waved awkwardly and waited until she had safely hobbled down our front steps before closing the door.

"How do you live with that woman right across the street?!" Alister finally groaned. "My _God_ , that was the longest three minutes of my life!"

Lara shrugged. "She's harmless. Sam's fine with it because she bakes for us sometimes."

"Worth it," Amanda said, grinning. Lara didn't glare at her or anything, so I figured everything was okay. "Although I have to wonder why she hasn't noticed your blatantly awful American accent. You might as well be wearing stars and stripes and riding a bald eagle screaming _'Go Yankees!'_ "

"I'm a Mets fan."

"I honestly don't even know what that means."

As Lara explained New York's two major league baseball teams, which she had unwillingly learned all about from me, I shuffled through the mail until I found the one Mrs. Robbins had mentioned. My eyes widened.

"What is it?" she asked, noticing my expression.

I frowned and read the envelope to her.

" _From the estate of Conrad Roth."_

Everyone fell silent.

"Roth? Your Roth?" Amanda asked. "The Roth that - ?"

Alister elbowed her sharply. Lara got up and took the envelope from me, white as a sheet.

"I'll...I'll be upstairs…" she said faintly as she made her way to her room. We all heard the door shut and the lock click.

They both stood up, and it was kind of heartwarming to know that we had friends that would step up like that when one of us was in a crisis.

"I've got it," I assured them, walking over to my purse in the closet and pulling out some cash. I handed it to Alister. "It'll be fine, just order something from that diner."

I hurried up the stairs, skipping two at a time and knocked gently at Lara's door.

"Let me in," I said bluntly. She expected that sort of thing from me, enough that she wordlessly opened the door three seconds later.

"Let me see," I ordered softly. She handed me the letter and flopped down on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

The letter was from some lawyer up in Oxfordshire. I knew just from reading the envelope what this was going to be about. After rescue teams recovered Roth's body from Yamatai and he was given a proper funeral, Lara had hoped that was all she needed to do. I had asked if he had any beneficiaries, but she had clammed up about that and ignored all attempts by everyone around her trying to settle his affairs. But over a month since his death, it had finally caught up.

"You're his heir," I read from the letter. I had figured as much. Roth hadn't lived to learn about the daughter he had with Reyes. Lara's father had been his best friend, and he had looked after his daughter like she were his own. It made sense. What I hadn't realized was the number near the bottom of the letter listing the value of his estate. "Oh, holy shit."

Roth was _loaded._

I looked at Lara, who was still staring at the ceiling. She was a trust fund baby, just like me. Her family had come from old money, and I knew she had a mansion about 2 hours or so outside of London that she only lived in on holidays from school. She had inherited a fortune when her parents died - I didn't know how much but I guessed it rivaled my own from my father's company. She had money that went to her education and other expenses, but she wouldn't be able to access the full trust until she turned 25. Even then, I doubted she would ever touch it. The girl liked to make her own way, do her own thing.

But Roth's money would make it so Lara could live a pretty great lifestyle until she could access her full inheritance.

She still hadn't said anything.

"I'll take it, if you don't want it."

That at least brought up a smile. It quickly faded, though. I knew what she was thinking about. All of it should have gone to Reyes and her daughter, Alisha. Roth never knew he had a family, right there across the pond. Lara felt guilty for robbing him of the chance to learn the truth. She felt guilty for keeping him to herself all these years. She felt awful for Reyes for losing him, and Alisha, for never realizing she had the World's Greatest Dad.

It broke my heart that she refused to forgive herself for anything, and took on burdens that weren't even hers. It physically hurt that I couldn't help her.

"It says we have to go to his home," I said, placing the letter on her desk. "They need a few more documents that are probably at his house, to set everything in order."

Silence.

"I know you don't want any of it, but we should still make sure Roth's estate is taken care of. Then, once everything is okay, we can find a way to force Reyes to accept the money. We'll fly to New York, break in, and shove cash in every nook and cranny of her house, if we have to."

Another smile.

"We'll record an old lottery drawing and put it in her DVD player," I said. "Then we'll buy a ticket with those numbers and give it to her. When she gets home we play the DVD, so when she reads the ticket she found, she'll think she won the lottery and we'll get some stranger to hand her a huge check."

Lara laughed and I clung to the noise like I would never hear it again.

"That's from _Fresh Prince of Bel-Air_."

"But before we even attempt any Will Smith hi-jinks, we need to get Roth's affairs in order. We need to go to his house."

I lay on my side next to her and rested my head on her shoulder, hugging one of her arms close to me. I didn't care if my hair was getting all over her face. I was going to stay like this until she felt better. If there wasn't anything else I could do for her, I was going to go all in with what I could.

"You keep saying 'we'."

"Huh?"

"I'm executor of his will," Lara clarified. "Not you. It's my responsibility. You don't have to get yourself tangled in this whole mess."

I lifted my head and looked her in those big stupid eyes of hers.

" _We."_

I put my head back down, and suddenly felt her hand stroking my hair. The fingers of her other hand searched for mine and then gripped it. I smiled. Her hands were so warm, so cozy. Her touch sent heat straight through me.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm really sorry I was a weird brat about you shagging Amanda."

I sighed. "It was dumb. I was just...well, you know what I'm like."

"Randy as hell?"

I barked out a laugh. "Well, yes, basically. I like to dance at clubs, I like to drink, I like to go on dates...I feel like it's been so long since I've been _me_ , the _old_ me. I guess you're not the only one wondering why we don't feel like the Old Sam and the Old Lara."

Lara paused thoughtfully.

"Maybe we're not the same Sam and Lara, but whoever I am now, I'll always be glad to have whoever _you_ are now."

It was just a good an answer as any. We settled into a comfortable quiet, and I nuzzled her shoulder as she ran her thumb up and down my wrist.

"Could you...would it be weird if I asked you not to have sex with Amanda ever again?"

The question was loaded with way too many implications for me to think about right now. Not while Lara had turned to her side so she could face me. Her soft, pink lips looked pensive, almost worried that they'd said the wrong thing. I wanted to ask her why. I wanted to ask her so many things.

"I won't," I said. I was unsure of a lot of things lately, but of that I was certain - if Lara asked me to do something, I would do it.

Her eyes searched mine, and then she grinned.

"Or Alister."

I laughed. "I will never ever sleep with Alister. Or Zip, or Naya, or Jonah, or Reyes. Just random strangers from now on, okay? I promise."

She whacked me with a pillow.


	5. Day 21

**DAY 21**

* * *

"Lara is afraid of _horses!?_ " I squawked gleefully, making absolutely sure the camera was rolling.

"Oh, dear, perhaps I shouldn't have told you that," Winston winked at me, knowing damn well that was the best thing I'd heard all year. "Young Lady Croft was always quite private."

"Don't I know it."

Lara's old butler had quickly become my second favorite person on the planet. My first favorite person, however, was looking at the both of us like she was actually, physically suffering under all these hilariously embarrassing childhood stories.

"But yes, _terribly_ afraid of them. It broke her mother's heart. She was an accomplished equestrian, you know. The field at the rear of Croft Manor was once an entire obstacle course. That stable once held purebred horses. One each for her mother, father, and a Welsh pony for little Lara."

" _Awwww!"_

"Alas, the Wee Lady Croft and Mr. Potato Head never got along."

I whirled around to gape at my best friend. "You named your pony _Mr. Potato Head?!_ "

"It was brown, like Mr. Potato Head!" Lara said defensively.

"Lots of things are brown! Chestnut, Brownie, Mocha, Toffee, Chocolate Thunder - "

"Chocolate Thunder?"

"Literally all those things are better names for a brown horse than _Mr. Potato Head."_

"It's doesn't matter. He was a monster. His head was huge and he had this creepy mouth and these creepy teeth. I was a small child, a horse could have easily gobbled me up," Lara reasoned. "I understand that they don't normally eat children - "

"Historically, there has never been a single situation in which a pony attempted to consume a child," Winston told her, and I got the feeling that this wasn't the first time he had to convince her of that.

"You can't possibly know that for sure."

"This is amazing," I gushed. "Absolutely amazing. _Tomb Raider_ can climb the tallest mountain, navigate the deepest seas, battle the strongest men, but ponies freak her out."

Lara had her head buried in her hands and was making a good show of groaning into them. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders gleefully.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you from the mean little horsies."

"Their hooves are troublingly large! People _die_ from being stomped by horses! And remember Christopher Reeve? This is a legitimate concern!"

Winston shook his head wistfully. "My favorite story was when Lara was following her mother around the obstacle course, without looking where she was going. She had been embroiled in a new story book Master Roth had gotten her on his travels."

"Typical Lara."

"Indeed. She walked right into the back legs of her own pony while it was grazing. The Wee Lady Croft fell on her little behind."

" _Awww!"_

Lara got up. "I'm going. I'm leaving you here, Sam. I'm driving back to London and you can just live here with Winston for the rest of your life."

Winston grinned and continued. "She surprised the pony, as well. And, as little Lara learned, surprised ponies have minimal control over when they... _eliminate_."

I felt like I was glowing. Like, actual light was emanating from my body, I felt that blessed. This was the greatest story ever told. This was going in the documentary. I didn't care if it had no bearing on the Yamatai subject whatsoever. It was getting edited in.

"Mr. Potato Head _peed_ on you?!" I practically wept. Lara rolled her eyes.

"Oh, if only it were just urine," Winston guffawed.

As if my eyes couldn't get any wider with joy.

" _You got pooped on by a pony?!"_

"Goodbye, I hate you both," Lara started to march off. "I hope you two are very miserable together."

" _Oh, my_ _God_!" I bounced up from the couch and dragged her back. "Winston, you've got to tell me more! Roth never told me this many stories, and even when he did they were so boring. 'Lara liked reading this, Lara solved that, blah blah blah artifacts blah'."

Winston looked up at Lara, his grey eyes twinkling. "Your friend is _delightful._ "

"No, she really isn't," she said, giving me a withering look.

"Sorry, Winston," I apologized on her behalf. " _Wee_ _Lady Croft_ gets cranky when she hasn't had her afternoon tea."

"You can't call me that," she complained. "Please, I've spent my entire life trying to get _him_ to stop, I can't have you doing it too!"

"Oh, dear," Winston wiggled his bushy white eyebrows playfully. "The Wee Lady Croft does sound like she needs her tea and biscuits. If you'll excuse me, girls, I'll have them ready in just a moment. Have you had lunch?"

"No," I said, at the same time Lara said, "We're fine."

"I'll prepare some sandwiches, as well."

The old butler eased his way up off the couch using a wooden cane. Lara followed him, trying to grab him by the shoulder, but it seemed he was used to this little dance. He easily dodged her attempts and whacked Lara across the fingers with his cane.

"Stop that," he said sternly.

"Winston, please. Let me do it. Just have a seat," she said, still trying to stop him. But Winston just swatted her off like she was a fly.

"Child, I have served your family since your father was in diapers. I do not intend to stop any time soon. Sit down and entertain your guest until I return." He shook his head as he hobbled off to the kitchen, muttering about how Lara's parents would be appalled at her lack of manners.

She reluctantly let him go, flopping back down next to me on the couch.

"I've missed him," she said. "So much."

I smiled at her and shut off my camera. I was still learning my filming boundaries, but I knew the fuzzy line was somewhere between Lara getting pooped on by a pony and Lara opening up about her family.

Up until today, I had only ever heard of Winston Smith, her beloved butler. Apparently he was an old war buddy of Lara's grandfather, and had helped raised her father as well as her. He lived alone in Croft Manor, now that her parents and Roth were gone and she lived in London. On holidays during college, when I went back to Japan to stay at my father's, she would come back here to Winston.

Roth had tried to make holidays too, when he wasn't out on his ship. He had apparently made the guest house at Croft Manor his permanent address a long time ago, though he traveled so much he was barely there. We were visiting so Lara could go through Roth's things for the lawyers, but also to go check up on Winston. It was my first time visit, and I was enjoying myself way too much.

"Doesn't Winston get lonely here?" I wondered.

"I used to think so," Lara sighed. "But he loves it here. When my parents left me this house, I thought I wanted to sell it. I have no use for this place anymore. It's just...it's so big. So empty."

"But you never sold it." Croft Manor was huge and old. Lara had given me the entire rundown of it's history on the drive. While I'd already forgotten most of it, I did know that it was practically a historical landmark. The government had even tried to acquire it once, since it was the site of some big war or something. Lara had refused.

"Because it's Winston's home, even more than it's mine," she said. "He spent over fifty years of his life here, devoted to my entire family. He raised me, he raised my father, and he was so close to my grandfather and Roth. I can't take this place from him, and he refuses to take ownership from me because he has some fool idea that Croft Manor should always belong to a Croft. So it's just kind of...here."

I reached out and twirled a finger in her hair, which she'd actually worn loose. Apparently, Winston was of the opinion that proper young ladies should always have their hair long and flowing. During a quick tour of Croft Manor, I saw tons of framed pictures of the Wee Lady Croft with her shiny brown locks. It was like every day was Easter, she always wore these cute little ruffled dresses and wide brimmed hats. If someone would have told me that sweet little thing would grow up to be the Lara Croft I knew and loved, I would have spat my drink in their face.

"We should visit more," I said thoughtfully. For an old-fashioned gentleman, Winston was a really great time. And he obviously loved Lara, and she him, which was all the more important now that she'd lost Roth.

"Right," she said dully. That was strange. Why wouldn't she want to come here more? Even back in college, she only went home on the long breaks, never for a weekend. I went home all the way around the world to Japan more often than she drove the two hours to Croft Manor.

"He could tell us more stories about your childhood."

Lara made a face.

"Come on, it's sweet. At least you _have_ childhood stories." My parents weren't around enough to remember my childhood, and I was shuffled from city to city, school to school, so I never had adult figures that knew me long enough to remember anything about me. All I had was what I could recall on my own, and it wasn't a lot. My therapist once suggested that was the reason I compulsively filmed everything and wanted everything documented. Perhaps I didn't want to lose any more memories, now that I was capable of preserving them for myself.

Her expression softened.

"Well, I've been to your childhood bedroom. That's enough of a story in itself. Tell me, Sam, did you cry when they told you Hello Kitty wasn't real?"

I barked out a laugh. "That is my _culture_ , you racist."

Winston soon called us out to the veranda for lunch, and regaled us with even more amazing Baby Lara stories that I would hold over her head for as long as she lived. When we were done, the poor butler looked a bit tired. I guessed he wasn't as accustomed to entertaining company as he used to be.

"Go rest, Winston," Lara said gently.

"Young lady, I am fine," he retorted, sounding almost like a child being put to bed. He poked her arm with his cane. "Elbows off the table. And your _posture_. If your mother could see how you hold yourself…"

To my great amusement, Lara sat up straighter. I hid a grin behind my hand.

" _Winston…"_

"Why can't you be more like Miss Nishimura? Her posture is impeccable."

I craned my neck proudly. Lara scowled.

"Her mother was a professional model! She _inherited_ that perfect bloody bone structure!"

"Language!"

"Oh, for Christ's sake - "

" _Language!"_

"Sorry."

I smiled sweetly, deciding that it was probably time for me to stop enjoying this and do what we came here to do. For Lara's sake, at least.

"Thank you very much for lunch, Winston. We didn't want to trouble you, since we came here on business."

He placed a hand on mine. "Miss Nishimura, it was no trouble at all. In fact, it was my pleasure."

"All the same, I hate to keep you. Why don't we go take care of things, and then meet you again before we leave?"

Winston pursed his lips. "I suppose I would enjoy a bit of a nap. It's gotten rather warm out here, hasn't it?"

I nodded. "Enjoy the air conditioning. We'll be done soon."

Lara was scowling at me. It was hilarious. The brash, American-raised party girl was out-poshing the perfect little English aristocrat.

He smiled at me and looked at her sternly. "If I'm asleep when you return, you promise me you'll wake me before you leave."

"We'll wait for you to wake up. I would never leave without saying goodbye. Croft's honor!" Lara made a cross over her heart, grinning.

I saw a little twitch in Winston's cheek. Before I could really wonder about it, he got up and began digging in his pockets.

"Here you are," he said, handing Lara a set of keys. "The silver one is the key to Master Roth's door. Don't forget to lock it on your way out."

When he left us, I turned to Lara. "Was it just me, or did he seem weirded out when you said _'Croft's honor'_?"

Lara was just as bewildered as I was. "He was. I used to do that all the time when I was little, I'd say it when I promised him things. I hadn't said it to him in a while, though. Maybe he just forgot about it."

"That's cute."

"Cute?" She smirked. "Not as cute as Posh, Proper, English Lady Nishimura, surely."

I raised my camera and flicked it on. "Ladies and gentleman, this is what jealousy looks like."

She laughed and started to walk out to the yard. "Oh, come on. Let's get this over with."

She led me across the grounds, which had been meticulously cared for by the staff she still employed, even though she hadn't really lived at Croft Manor since she was ten years old. It was easy to forget that Lara came from money. She held so many odd jobs in college, but it wasn't until our second year that she told me it was almost all just to pay off the Manor staff and Winston, since her trust fund hadn't kicked in yet and the money she did have could only be put into her education.

It really was a lovely property. The exact place I would have pictured my best friend to have been brought up. At least, my old best friend - the Lara I met our first year at UCL. Winston's little princess definitely learned to loosen up, thanks to me. Then Yamatai happened, and, well…

The rough-and-tumble Tomb Raider was practically a stranger in this place, now. But with her hair down and wearing that weird pastel blouse I didn't know she owned, I could almost imagine her living here, picking flowers in the garden, reading a book in the gazebo, sipping tea on the veranda as the sun set. I watched as she walked briskly, the only way she knew how to walk, her shiny hair blowing behind her. Lara really was exceptionally pretty here, and I wondered what sort of life she would have led if everything had happened just a little bit differently.

"You okay, Sam?" Lara met my eye and I blushed.

"Yeah, hey, where did the pony poop on you?" I asked hastily, hoping I didn't sound like someone that was just caught gazing at her best friend's beauty and wanted to cover it up.

"Shut up," she said. As an afterthought, she pointed. "Over there."

I changed the mode on my camera to take stills and then snapped a picture. _"Classic."_

"I hate you so much."

I grinned at the photo, just imagining a tiny little Lara staring up in horror as a pony's -

"Wait..." A few feet back from where Lara's little incident happened, I saw a large grey monument in the picture. I looked up and saw it in the distance. It was a rectangular granite column, maybe six feet tall with a pointed tip and covered in little gold plates, like the kind you found on trophy plaques. Intrigued, I peeled away from Lara and headed over to take a look, with my camera at the ready.

"Sam? Where are you…?"

I stared. The monument was covered in name plates, some so old they had tarnished, and some that still shone more brightly than the others. All the names were still readable, though.

 _Richard H. Croft (1932-1999)_

 _Margaret A. Croft (1937-1962)_

 _Richard H. Croft II (1962-2002)_

 _Amelia D. Croft (1965-2002)_

 _Conrad F. Roth (1961-2013)_

"We have a mausoleum in the nearby cemetery," Lara explained as she caught up to me. "But my family has kept a monument here for generations."

I quietly ran my fingers over Roth's engraved nameplate. Of course he would be here, why wouldn't he? So many generations of Croft. I wondered how many had met deaths like Lara's parents and Roth, giving up their lives seeking some kind of truth. I felt a chill run down my spine when I realized that one day, far, _far_ into the future, Lara's name would be added to the monument. My heart clenched. I could barely even stand to think of it, and she was still standing right there next to me.

Lara came from a long line of adventurers. There was a good chance her parents and Roth weren't the last ones destined to die tragically for the sake of their passion.

I took a slow deep breath, trying to compose myself. Lara was right here. She was safe. The doctor had convinced her that she needed six weeks worth of healing time. I still had a few weeks left before I had to worry about her running off on some expedition. She was still here, she was still mine.

I heard a slight sniffle and almost thought it came from me, before I turned to find Lara's jaw set tight, her eyes welling up and nostrils flaring.

"Oh, _Lara._ "

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "It's just, I'd forgotten that Roth's name would be there. I'm still...it was a little unexpected. I'm sorry.

I dropped the camera and wrapped my arms around her. "It's okay, Lara."

"I didn't think it would still hurt..."

I felt her knees start to buckle and I gently eased the both of us down into the grass. I let her sob, pressing her head into my chest and running my hands through her hair.

I imagined a little girl, crumpling here eleven years ago in the exact same way after her parents died. I cradled Lara like she was that girl, and it was all I could do not to cry with her. She had lost almost everything. No wonder coming home was so difficult. What I saw was a beautiful estate, straight out of a Jane Austen novel.

What she saw were ghosts.

After a few minutes, she swiped a hand across her eyes.

"I've ruined your top," she sniffed, looking down at my soaked neckline.

"It's fine." I smiled at her, moving her hair from her face. She wore her hair in a ponytail so much that I often forgot she had so much of it. "You really have to let me trim your bangs soon."

Lara choked out a laugh. "Tomorrow."

"That's what you always say."

She pulled away and started to get up, picking up my camera and handing it back.

"All right, I'm done making a fool of myself. Let's go - "

"Wait," I said, tugging her back down with me. "Let's just sit here a minute."

"But...why?"

"Just sit down."

She sat and we just sort of leaned against each other, in front of the monument. After several seconds ticked by in silence, the words started to pour out her.

Lara told me about her grandfather, his kind eyes and endless stories. She never even knew her grandmother, who died giving birth to her father, and instead had a second grandfather in Winston. She told me about how her parents and Roth journeyed together, and sometimes even took her along. Then she told me about her parents last trip, how it was supposed to be a short research expedition to Peru, and they had promised to bring her back an alpaca. How they never returned, and Roth and Winston dropped everything to look after her. How she eventually had to go to boarding school, because Roth knew she needed a proper education and Winston knew he alone couldn't teach her how to be a "proper lady".

Lara told me more about her childhood in the next ten minutes than she had in all the years we'd been best friends.

When she was done, her eyes had fully dried. I held her anyway, just enjoying the feel of her against me.

"You're scared of ponies, but not alpacas?" I teased.

"I used to think they looked like they wore Christmas jumpers all year round."

"...Oh, my God, that is the _cutest thought anyone has ever thought._ "

"Stop."

"The Wee Lady Croft was the most precious little thing!" I pinched her cheeks and she tried to slap me away.

"Shut up."

"If I met you as a kid, I woulda put you right in my pocket and taken you home with me!"

"We're the same age!" She pretended to scowl, but I could tell I'd brightened her mood. We got up and brushed the freshly mown grass from our laps. Lara took one last look at the monument before heading back to the Roth's guesthouse.

I took one last curious look as well.

"Wait, did that one say Henshingly Croft, _Earl of Abbingdon?!_ " I jogged to catch up with her.

"That's my great-grandfather. Lord Henshingly Croft."

I gaped at her. "You're descended from _royalty?!_ "

"I suppose, technically I'm a countess? It's a meaningless title, the name barely carried any weight even in the 1800s."

"You _are_ royalty?!"

"This is England! Who the bloody hell isn't?!"

"Should I be, like, bowing before I talk to you?"

She rolled her eyes and walked faster. "All right, we're officially finished talking about this."

"Should I kiss your hand? I should kiss your hand."

"Don't you dare."

"Let help you with your corset, Lady Croft!" I ran to catch up and wrapped my arms around her middle.

"I am never bringing you here again."

"Your _Majesty!"_ I carried on like this as Lara led me across the old equestrian field and towards Roth's guest house.

I fell silent as we stopped at the front steps. It was like a shed compared to the rest of Croft Manor. A shed bigger than our entire townhouse back in London. Lara faltered as she inserted the silver key into the doorknob. I put my hand on her shoulder for support.

When she opened the door, we were slapped in the face with an odor that smelled like bad cologne, cigars, moldy paper, and scotch. I held my breath and looked at Lara. She inhaled deeply and sighed, as if it smelled absolutely delicious. I wondered if she was smelling something different than I was. Maybe she was having a stroke.

"It still smells like Roth."

"It's...nice…?"

I watched as Lara entered the foyer and immediately stopped at a table by the hall closet. She opened a wooden box and smiled sadly. There were four cigars inside. I said nothing as her fingers ran over their surface thoughtfully.

It occurred to me that walking through here for the first time was probably extremely personal for Lara. Maybe this wasn't the time for filming or jokes or other distractions.

"Do you want me to leave you alone a minute?" I asked gently.

"It's fine, Sam," she said, her voice sounding choked. "I'm fine."

I very carefully gave her a peck on the cheek.

"I know you are. I'll be right outside if you need me, okay?"

Lara seemed to barely notice as she opened what looked like a leather-bound journal. I quietly stepped out, making sure to leave the door open in case Lara called, and took a seat on the front step of the house.

To my surprise, I saw Winston making his way across the grounds.

I waved. "I thought you were tired?"

"Oh, I tried to nap, but I can't rest knowing little Lara is here. It's too exciting." He grinned. "I thought I might offer my help."

I peered back through the door. Lara had disappeared from the foyer, going deeper into the house. It looked like she had taken the box of cigars and journal with her. "I think she needs some time alone in there."

"Understood. It's just as well," he said, easing himself down next to me. "I've been meaning to speak with you in private."

I blinked, bewildered. "Me?"

"Miss Nishimura, I'm an old man, so I've little time to waste beating around the bush. I must ask, what are your intentions with the young Lady Croft?"

The air and saliva in my mouth suddenly got very thick and dry. It was like trying to breath in sawdust. I choked, and he patted my back kindly.

"My...my intentions?"

"Yes," he said, offering no further explanation.

I knew Lara spoke to Winston a lot on the phone. Had she told him about the kiss, that night at the museum? Surely not. He was basically a grandfather to her, I would never discuss awkward feelings towards my best friend with my grandfather. Although I never met mine, what the hell did I know? Was that something you normally talked about with grandparents?

No. Winston was an old-fashioned British gentleman that believed in proper young ladies and probably curtsies and dowries or whatever. No way. I was completely misinterpreting this.

"Winston, Lara is my absolute best friend. She's the most important person to me. I would follow her to hell if I had to."

He shifted next to me, as if he wanted this conversation to move along more quickly and I was slowing him down. Thankfully, he didn't ask for me to elaborate, or question it any further. At least he could tell how uncomfortable I was.

"You care for her."

"Of course I do." I said it instantly, because there was only one answer to that and it came more naturally to me than anything. Still, my voice sounded strangled. Maybe it was the way he was looking at me, searching my eyes as if he was looking for something else. But there was literally no bigger truth than the fact that Lara meant the world to me. "As a _friend_ , of course…"

"Oh, dear," he sighed, the two words heavy with things left unsaid.

"What?"

He considered me for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing. "Lara is more a Croft than anyone else I knew in her family. She is as loyal as her mother, smarter even than her father, brave like her grandmother, and as strong as her grandfather."

"I know that. I know she's all of those things."

"Then you know why I worry."

My brow furrowed. "Uh, no?"

"What if I told you Lara's parents didn't die in something as simple as a airplane accident?" Winston asked solemnly. "What if I told you Lara's grandfather didn't die of a heart attack? And what if I told you that the very attributes that make the Croft family so exceptional, are the ones that always bring about their downfall?"

I stared at him. This was...not unexpected. On the contrary, it was something I had feared.

"What happened to them?"

He just looked at me grimly. "I do not know for sure. Master Roth was on the verge of something, but he never completed his investigation."

"Does...does Lara know about that?"

Winston shook his head. "She likely suspects the stories Roth and I told her weren't the whole truth. More so now than before, I imagine."

"She's going to look into it," I told him. "She's going to find the truth, no matter how dangerous, no matter how much trouble she'll get in. That's what she does."

"Of course. Any Croft would do the same."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked softly.

"Because, you are still here." His wrinkled hand found my shoulder and squeezed. _And I would follow her to hell._

"You're trying to say you want me to help her?" I guessed. "Protect her?"

"I have tried to protect her family. I failed, every single one of them. I know firsthand that it cannot be done."

My stomach clenched. "Lara isn't going to end up like her family. I never met her parents or grandparents, but I've met _her_. I know _her_."

"Adventure always finds a Croft, Miss Nishimura. Adventure always claims them, sooner or later."

They were cursed, he was trying to say. They were cursed with a thirst for adventure and curiosity to understand everything. They were too brave, too determined for their own good.

" _Why are you telling me this?_ " I demanded again, more forcefully. He didn't say anything, but I knew. He was trying to warn me - it wasn't easy to love a Croft. There was a reason that there was only one left, and a reason that they had an entire monument for lives that were cut tragically short. It was painful, Winston knew better than anyone. He stood by their side for over fifty years, and now here I was going down the same road.

The next generation of Winston.

" _Sir_ , all due respect, you don't know me. I'll protect her, and she'll protect me. Lara isn't her parents or grandparents, and _I'm_ not _you_ ," I said hotly. I regretted it the second it flew out of my mouth. Winston looked stung. "Oh, my God! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't mean - !"

"No," he said gently. "No, I understand how you feel. I thought the same, once."

Winston's gaze strayed across the grounds. He was looking at the monument. I looked at it with him and felt that chill down my back again.

"I loved a Croft once. More than - more than was allowed..." he said sadly. My eyebrows nearly shot up off my head. Lara had mentioned before that her butler and her grandfather had been so close, it was like having two grandfathers. Did that mean…?

"I swore to always be there for him, but I ended up watching him die. Then I swore to protect his son and his daughter-in-law, but I was the one who had to scatter their ashes into the ocean. Now I'm left with his precious granddaughter, and every morning I fear it's the day I shall lose her, as well."

I swallowed hard. He had loved her grandfather, and Lara was the one last chance Winston had not to fail him. The one last Croft.

He was still looking at the monument wistfully. I put my hand on his and held it.

"You won't lose her," I said firmly. "And _I_ won't. I've got her back."

A slow smile appeared on his face. "I don't believe in much anymore, Miss Nishimura, but I believed that."

Suddenly we heard Lara come running down the stairs. She normally had such a light step that she just kind of ninja'ed up to people and startled them, but she was in too much of a hurry to be quiet.

"Sam! Sam, look!" she cried, holding out a rumpled piece of paper.

I read the document Lara had found and my eyes widened. It was the last will and testament of Conrad Roth, dated one week before the Endurance set sail. Most of it was your standard boring stuff, but a name caught my eye near in one of the middle paragraphs.

" _Alisha Reyes,"_ I read in wonder. She handed the journal to me, one of the pages folded over, and I read that too. "He figured it out, right before we left for Yamatai. He intended to surprise her and Reyes as soon as he came back."

"He knew," Lara said, her eyes swimming. "He knew, and he named her his heir."


	6. Day 23

**DAY 23**

* * *

This was a mistake.

Talking Lara into coming out to the club with us and putting her in that low-cut top and those skin-tight leggings was a mistake.

"I look ridiculous," she muttered. But I'd done her makeup, so she knew damn well that wasn't true.

"You don't. You look…" I swallowed hard, trying to tone myself down a little. "Good call on not wearing the midriff thing. I mean, your abs are fantastic, but Lord help us all, your cleavage is _otherworldly_."

She laughed. I gushed stuff like that at her all the time when I wanted her to come out with me. There was no reason to think that it wasn't anything more than a friend trying to make her feel good about herself. No reason to think that her best friend was practically drooling at her and fighting all sorts of crazy urges just to tolerate being in the same room.

No reason at all.

"Well, I think I'm done with cropped tops for good," Lara rolled her eyes, pulling her shirt up a little to reveal the long, dark scar twisting her skin. "My stomach looks like Frankenstein's monster."

I let myself gaze at her for a moment, until she started to stare at me back.

"Er, Sam?" she dropped the hem of her top back down, startling me out of my trance.

"I...it looked kind of pink for a second." I lied, a blush creeping up my neck. Lara quirked an eyebrow. "I mean, like it might be infected again or something."

" _You_ look kind of pink," she shot back. "How much have you had to drink already?"

We were going out with the girls, for the first time in so long I could have wept. Naya and Amanda would meet us the club in about an hour. We would dance, we would have fun, we would be _normal_ for once. So of course I'd done a little pre-gaming.

I held my thumb and index finger about an inch apart. "Just about that much."

She raised a knowing brow. "You mean, that's about all that's left of the liquor?"

I grinned. Lara still hadn't completed her course of antibiotics, so she would be sticking to Coke and seltzer water, but I would do everything in my power to make sure she had some fun. I would not let her sit in her little reading nook staring at her phone all night.

Lara had called Reyes just over twenty-four hours ago and left a voicemail, urging her to call her back. This morning, she left a second one, this time mentioning "it's about Roth" and hoping for a more prompt response. It was now 9 PM and no word from Reyes yet.

I understood there was a time zone difference, and that Reyes had a busy life and a daughter to raise, but I was starting to get a little annoyed at her. Reyes hadn't spoken to us since she left us in Tokyo. After the experience we'd shared, I would have thought we'd be a little closer than that. Jonah made every effort to email and send us funny Facebook messages all the way from New Zealand, and he called us every once in a while to make sure his 'little London birds' were doing okay.

"Let's just go, Lara," I insisted.

"I'm sorry I'm not into this, Sam," she said absently, swiping through her phone as if she might've missed a message. She had been doing that all day. "I don't even think I'm allowed to dance, anyway. That might count as strenuous activity."

"Yeah, you're _that_ hardcore of a two-stepper," I scoffed. "C'mon, you're already dressed."

She just made a deprecative noise.

"Look, your options for tonight are as follows - you can come with us to the club, watch people dance, have a bit of fun, maybe meet a guy - "

Another scoffy-snorty sound.

" - Or, you can sit here all night watching your phone not do anything."

"Option B."

I planted my absurdly high heels into her rug and pulled on her arm firmly. " _Laraaaaaa...!_ "

She looked at me, then looked at her phone.

"I suppose if she rings me I can always answer there. I'll just duck into a bathroom or wherever the music isn't so loud."

I groaned. "Sure, sure. Let's go already!"

After leaving Croft Manor, Lara and I had both been in something of a funk. She was doing everything in her power, short of swimming to New York herself, to get in touch with Reyes. It was of the utmost importance that she unload Roth's surprisingly decent fortune on Alisha, along with the shit ton of the guilt she was carrying around with her. This meant she was largely ignoring me, which was absolutely fair.

Except my conversation with Winston had gotten me thinking a lot about Lara, even more so than usual. We were in the third week of her doctor-ordered prison sentence. In less than a month, she would be healthy enough to travel, rested enough to chase down whatever it was she was after now, and determined enough to almost get herself killed all over again. I wouldn't have put it past her to try and spread her wings early, either. It was probably a good thing she was so busy obsessing over Roth's will. Otherwise, I'd be terrified of waking up one morning with her gone and a note on the fridge.

I thought about her parents. Eventually, she would find out their deaths weren't as innocent as she'd been led to believe. I had considered telling her several times, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I could already see how enthralled she was with the Cuneiform Mystery, and who knew where that would lead her. Maybe it would be an innocent field trip, maybe it would be perfectly safe. But then again, Yamatai had all started because of one of Lara's books, too. If it wasn't this, it would be the next thing. It would be investigating her parents death, or something worse.

Until adventure took her, I was going to be selfish. That meant I was going to spend as much 'normal' time with her as I could, and _that_ meant getting her to relax about Reyes. There was nothing we could do until she reached back out to us, so why sit around and do nothing? Provided I didn't slowly go insane over how Lara looked in that top, we would have ourselves a good time tonight.

"It's just going to be us, Naya, and Amanda?"

"I promise."

I knew she was worried I'd also invited some of my old party buddies from school, the bunch of girls I used to go out with when Lara was being too much of a geeky shut-in. Truth be told, I rarely spoke to those girls anymore. Obviously, I still saw value in letting loose on a Saturday night, but that was no longer _all_ I saw in life.

She let me take her phone and shove it into the clutch I was letting her borrow. Then I held it out to her.

"Come on. Let's act like we're students again. Let's pretend like these past few weeks never happened."

She took the bag and gave me a tentative smile.

"All right. But I'm wearing this." She shrugged a cropped leather jacket on over her blessed outfit. "It's going to be cold later."

I sighed. That was fair enough.

* * *

Lara was with Amanda at the bar, chatting happily about something. Probably the hilarity of some mis-categorized antiquity collection or whatever.

"So yeah," Naya was saying to me as we danced further off to the side of the floor. "They haven't gotten back to me yet, but I hear they're only hiring people with a minimum of five years experience."

"Yeah?"

"The job market is so tough these days for new graduates."

"Uh-huh."

"I suppose I'll have to prostitute myself. Do you think Zip would mind?"

"Great."

Naya stopped and shook her head. "Wow."

I vaguely sensed that I might have missed something. "Wait, _what!?_ "

She smirked. "There are practically lasers shooting out of your eyes, Sam. I'm surprised Amanda isn't rolling around the floor on fire."

"I mean, look at her!" I complained. "I know that look. She's given me that look. That look is how we met."

"Oh, I remember how you met," Naya said, still smirking. "And I suppose she gave you that _look_ last Sunday?"

I glared. Surely Lara hadn't said anything.

"Oh, come off it. You know Amanda isn't shy about her sex life," she said. "At least, not when she's had a few. And believe me, she's had more than afewtonight."

Ugh. Even shitfaced, Amanda was still impossibly attractive. She had one arm curled around Lara's, and it was moving up and down more sensually than I would have liked. My only saving grace was that Lara seemed mostly bewildered by it.

"This is ridiculous."

Naya shrugged. "You're the one always trying to get her laid. Maybe you should just let her."

"With _Amanda?_ "

"Why not? You shagged her twice _._ She must be a good lay, and Lara deserves some good in her life."

"Well, yeah, but Lara's not like me," I insisted. "She wouldn't sleep with someone so casually. When she decides to do something, she's all in. Amanda would hurt her feelings."

"From what I've heard, Lara can handle herself quite well." Naya pulled me off the dance floor. It was clear I wasn't all that into it anymore. "You're so protective of her."

"She's my best friend," I reminded her. "That's my job. Plus, I mean, Lara's not even gay."

Naya snorted. "You assume because she was having it off with _Alister_ for a couple months?"

"Alister's a guy."

"You've been with tons of blokes _and_ ladies," she pointed out.

"You think she's bi?"

Suddenly I saw Amanda laugh and tug Lara onto the dance floor. To my surprise, she didn't try to pull away. She let Amanda put her hands on her hips and bring her closer.

Naya nodded at them. "Er, I think she's about to find out."

Just as I was about to march over and tell Amanda to watch her damn hands, which were starting to creep southward on my best friend, Lara stepped back, grinning nervously. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but a wave of relief washed over me.

"I guess she's not gay," I said. Naya looked at me, her expression unreadable.

"Or she just doesn't fancy _Amanda._ "

"Are you kidding? Have you seen Amanda?" When she didn't respond, I looked up at her. "What?"

She just shook her head and sighed. "Never mind. Nothing. What do I know? I'm just your friendly neighborhood hetero, after all."

Deciding Naya was probably just too wasted to have an actual conversation, I looked back at Lara, who had returned to the bar. Amanda looked slightly put out, but followed her and ordered another drink for herself. She offered to get something for Lara, but she shook her head curtly, opening up her purse and fishing around. I was practically beaming with pride.

Until Lara found her phone. Her eyes widened and she excused herself, rushing out of the club.

"Uh-oh," I said. "Be right back, Naya."

I ran after her, nearly bowling over the bouncer as I did.

"Lara? _Lara!_ "

She was too fast, and had a head start. I hurried to the curb, where I was surrounded by dozens of my people - the young, drunk, and merry. A few of the guys even tried to hit on me as I scanned the crowd for Lara. I glared at them and they backed off immediately. I'd learned that trick from her.

"Lara!" I called out again, trying to think. No, she wouldn't be out on the streets on a beautiful Saturday night. She would be somewhere quiet. Somewhere _stupid_. I looked around and spotted the alley between the building of our club and the next one, a closed electronics store. It was dark, smelled weird, and was probably dangerous.

So of course she was there, pacing back and forth by an old dumpster in her stunning outfit with her phone pressed to her ear as she pleaded urgently.

"Alisha is fourteen, Reyes. In a few years - no, I know, just - _please_. She won't have any problems paying for uni if - no, of course I know you've been planning - I know - I know - _Reyes_ \- !"

Against my better judgement, I took a seat on the least dirtiest milk crate I could find. I touched her wrist as she paced past me, to remind her that I was there for her when she was done. She gripped my hand quickly in acknowledgement before letting go and continuing her conversation.

"Because I don't want it. I don't _need_ it. Reyes, you have a _child!_ "

This didn't seem to be going well. Lara looked like she was starting to get upset.

"You are being unreasonable - "

There was a long pause this time as Lara listened. I struggled, but couldn't hear anything Reyes was saying, even in the quiet alley. Especially since Lara was walking back and forth so fast.

"I know it doesn't matter what I want," she said. "This is...this is what _Roth_ would have wanted!"

Suddenly, her mouth snapped shut.

"Lara? What's the matter?"

Lara wasn't saying anything. She was staring at the brick wall, her phone still pressed to her ear but very obviously not hearing.

"Are you okay?" I got up and went over to her, just as she dropped the phone. I quickly snatched it out of the air as she darted out of the alley, tears in her eyes. From the phone, I could hear Reyes's voice.

" _Lara? Lara, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that! Lara, are you there? Answer me!"_

I glared at the phone, feeling anger flood my veins.

"What did you say to her?" I demanded, seething.

"Sam?" Reyes sounded startled.

"What did yousay?!"

"Sam, please, put Lara on the phone."

"She just ran away from me!" I shouted. "What the _fuck_ did you say to her!?"

"I...I didn't…" Reyes was being so uncharacteristically soft-spoken and regretful that it was almost disorienting. Normally she said everything confidently with a hard edge to it. She was a scary woman, sometimes. But right then, I was the scary one.

"She said _'this is what Roth would have wanted'_ ," I prompted angrily. "And then _you_ said...?"

"...I said what he would have wanted was to come home safely and meet his real daughter," she admitted. "But I didn't mean that, I was just being over-emotional and I have this stupid thing about accepting charity - I'm _sorry_ , I wasn't even thinking - "

"Fuck you, Reyes," I snarled.

I hung up, shut off Lara's phone, and shoved it into my purse. I took a deep breath. That was dumb, I shouldn't have stopped to yell at Reyes. I could have yelled at her while going after Lara. Now she was nowhere in sight. She was recovered enough that she'd already started some light jogging again, and she was always fitter than I was. Lord only knew how far she'd run by now.

I wracked my brain, thinking of where she would have gone. I highly doubted she would have gone back to the club. All those people, all that noise, she had been uncomfortable going there even _before_ she was upset. I didn't think she would go to the nearby park, either. It was too close to the pubs and there would have been too many drunks staggering around. When Lara was upset she needed to get away. Far, far away.

She had to be thinking about Roth. She had to have gone somewhere that meant something to the two of them. That could have been any number of places. They had favorite cafes, favorite parks, favorite museums...

I could _strangle_ Reyes. I knew she was mourning over Roth, and I knew she had that stupid sense of pride that made her overreact to things like people just giving her money, but I didn't think she was capable of saying something so hurtful to Lara. She _knew_ the deaths of our friends was something that stabbed at Lara every single day. For Christ's sake, how could Reyes say that to someone Roth loved so much?

God, even I was feeling that pang in my chest at the thought of him. Roth was such a good man, and I was so happy that Lara had him in her life. I remembered when I first met him…

 _That was it._ I ran back to the club and went right past it, turning the corner to where I remembered she had parked my car. She had been our designated driver, because of her alcohol restriction.

Amanda and Naya were standing there, next to the empty space.

"Sam!" Amanda cried. "Lara just drove off! What's going on?"

Despite everything, I was still kind of annoyed at her for her hijinks at the bar, so I mostly looked at Naya when I told them.

"She just got a really shitty phone call from Reyes."

"Is Reyes all right?" Naya asked.

"She won't be, next time I see her," I said darkly. "She upset Lara."

"Did she go home?" Amanda wondered. "We should go find her."

I shook my head. Lara wanted to be alone and didn't want to speak to anyone. I don't know why I always assume I'm the exception, but I knew she definitely wouldn't want to be bumrushed by _three_ girls who'd been drinking all night.

"I know where she is. I'll get her and make sure she gets home." I saw a taxi coming our way and hailed it down. "Sorry, ladies. We'll try this again another night?"

They both looked concerned. When the taxi stopped, Amanda made a move to get in with me.

"No, no, she doesn't want to be crowded," I insisted. Naya took Amanda by the wrist and tugged her away.

"Sam's got this," she told her, giving me a knowing look. "Let's just get out of here. We'll ring them in the morning."

"But…"

I smiled at Naya appreciatively and shut the door. The driver turned to me.

"Where're you off to, lass?"

"The Birckbeck Library."

He gave me a weird look. "It's closed."

"I know."

He shrugged, but a fare was a fare, so he drove. I waited for him to disappear down the street before walking up to the library's locked door. As suspected, I saw my BMW parked across the street. There was an iron fence nearby, maybe eight or nine feet tall. Tall enough for someone annoyingly athletic to climb up and leap onto that second-story corner balcony, where I noticed one of the windows was open.

" _Fuck,"_ I whined. Right there in front of me was a security camera. I could practically feel it judging me. "I wonder how much my bail is gonna be this time."

I pulled off my heels and set them by the fence. Using a trick I'd learned from Disney's _Mulan_ , I slung my purse around one of the bars of the fence and slowly but surely monkeyed my way up. Grunting, I swung a leg over until I was sitting at the top. I was glad no one really frequented libraries at midnight on Saturdays, because my skirt was way too short for anyone to witness this.

After taking a breather, I tried to balance myself on the fence, and suddenly became acutely aware that I'd had a lot to drink. It was dawning on me that this was enormously ill-advised. I was going to fall and fracture my neck trying to drunk-invade a goddamn library in the middle of the night. My dad was going to see this in the news, and he wasn't going to care that at least I looked really good tonight.

" _Sam!?"_

Lara was on the balcony, looking appropriately alarmed. I waved.

She gasped. "What - _oh, my God!_ "

I toppled forward, ready to break my face on the concrete, when suddenly I felt my shirt snag on something. I looked up to see Lara holding on to the back of my top with one hand.

"Sam!" she gasped. "Grab my hand, I'm losing my grip!"

Okay, this was pretty hilarious. Until I hear my top tear a little, I was dangerously close to giggling for no reason.

"This bloody see-through fabric is _ripping!_ "

That sobered me up real quick. I grabbed her arm with both my hands and started to hoist myself up. Soon I was high enough that she was able to grab me with both hands and pull me over the rail. We landed in a heap on the balcony, hyperventilating.

"It's called _chiffon_ ," I said, forlornly holding the shredded edges of my formerly cute top.

"What are you doing here?!" Lara demanded incredulously.

"Oh, you know, it's Saturday night. I thought I could brush up on my Ancient Mesopotamian History."

Typical Lara didn't seem to get the sarcasm.

"I'm here to find _you_ , idiot."

"How did you know where I was?"

"Because I know you." As an afterthought, I added, "Idiot."

I caught her grinning as she pulled off her leather jacket and put it around my shoulders to cover my ripped top. She led me inside, where I saw she had pushed a chair up to a low table. As expected, there were several books piled on the table.

Lara pulled up another chair next to hers and we sat down.

"Reyes is a bitch," I said immediately.

"No she isn't."

"She told me what she said to you," I argued. "She is _such_ a bitch!"

Lara just shook her head somberly.

"She's hurting. Mourning. I brought up something painful, and she lashed out. She's...she's just like me."

" _No_ ," I insisted.

"You're right. I'm worse," she said glumly. "Loads worse. And here I am, everyone wanting interviews and documentaries and university lectures. A whole other inheritance to my name. All the awful things I've done, and I still - "

I cut her off with a hug, so fierce that it almost felt like I was trying to physically hold her together. Whenever she got like this, launched herself into this guilt vortex, I always felt like I needed to hold her to me to keep her with me.

If I could throw her over my shoulder and carry her to a therapist myself, I'd do it. There was no other way I could think of to save my best friend. I couldn't let her be healthy, physically fit and ready to go out on another expedition, with her mindset like this. I'd lose her for sure.

My face was buried in her hair, which she'd worn down again and God, was it soft. I didn't let go until she hugged back.

"Th-thank you."

She looked eerily tiny. Lara had lost weight since Yamatai, but that was to be expected. It was more the way she held herself now, hunched over in her chair, head bowed. She was an inch shorter than I was, but she had always seemed taller. Broader at the shoulders and stronger. Now, she looked like a teenager.

"It used to be that nothing could bother me. Nothing could hurt me," Lara said. "Now it feels like _everything_ does."

"Nothing used to hurt you because nothing used to matter as much," I said softly. Lara being unsure of herself was so unsettling, so unlike the girl I had known before Yamatai. "You've actually found things to care about."

"And lost them."

I sighed and sat back, looking at our familiar surroundings. It was a study room, one that Lara used to frequent as a student. There were three old computers in the corner and a few empty cubicle desks, all surrounded by huge bookcases stuffed full of books about myths and legends. It had been her little escape from the hustle and bustle from university life. I never saw any other students in here but her. Why would there be? Birckbeck and UCL were institutions of science. If anything crossed over into myth or legend, all the nerds needed was a quick Wikipedia search. No one needed to do _real_ research on these things. The stuff in these books weren't true, after all. They were just stories.

Stories that Lara's father used to tell her when she was young. Stories he had been obsessed with. Stories that had ruined his career in the archaeological community.

Stories that we discovered were real on that godforsaken island in the Dragon's Triangle.

"Remember the first time I came here?" I asked her. She nodded.

"A month after you met me." A small smile appeared on her face. "That's when you met Roth."

"Right. You were up here reading something about Arthurian legend," I recalled. "And some rugged silver fox comes up to me on the street - "

" _Ew_ , Sam."

" - asking me where he could find Lara Croft," I continued. "I, wondering why this scruffy, mercenary-looking guy was coming after my new best friend, directed him to the performing arts building and told him you had taken up ballet."

Lara was grinning widely. "I wish I could have seen his face."

"It was amazing," I assured her. "But he wised up and found his way back here."

She laughed. "You ran up to this room and told me there was a big scary man outside in awful cargos and combat gear coming after me, and we had to run."

"It looked like a combat gear!"

"It was a fishing jacket."

"Well, that's suspicious enough," I scowled. "What normal person needs all those pockets?"

"When he came into the room, you had me so worried that I threw a book at his head."

I smiled. "Classic."

"Then _you_ threw one."

"I thought he was a human trafficker!"

Lara was cracking up. "He was so confused, but I was too busy chucking things at him and trying to find a way the both of us could escape. Oh my God, we didn't stop until that entire shelf was empty!"

"Then he was all _'Lara, girl, it's me!'_ ," I continued, mimicking his accent. "You stopped throwing books and I'm sitting there thinking _'82% of all rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows'_."

"Then you asked him who the hell he was. He was like a deer in headlights."

"And then?" I pressed, herding her into saying what my point was all along.

At some point, one of us had pushed our chairs together. Her arm was around my shoulders and my head was resting against her neck. I was watching her breath catch with the rise and fall of her chest. If she wasn't going to say it, I would.

"He said, _'I'm Conrad Roth, and that's my girl.'_ "

I let Lara remember that fondly for a moment. Sometimes she needed a reminder that she always had a family. Maybe her parents were killed in some shady cover-up and everyone that loved her was keeping it from her. Maybe we were all guilty of lying to her. But I understood what Winston had said, and what Roth had done. Being family meant protecting our girl.

"Then I threw one more book and you yelled at me."

Lara snickered and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

"You know, I didn't even really know why I came here until you reminded me of that story."

"Well, it looks like you found stuff to do anyway," I remarked, taking a look at the books she'd pulled out. "Kali Yuga? Frashokereti? Gilgamesh? Are these actual words or am I just _that_ drunk?"

Lara chuckled and pulled away the top three books so I could see the others.

"Ah, Ragnarok. The Rapture. The Apocalypse. Fun bedtime reading." I nodded. "Wait, what's _The Book of the Heavenly Cow_?"

"That's a theological interpretation of several different tomb paintings in Ancient Egypt," she explained. "Including some Egyptian legends about the End of Days."

"Okay, well, that is weird on several levels," I said. "But I guess my main question is, why the hell are you reading up on the end of the world?"

She tugged the books back towards herself. "The cuneiform my father discovered - so far it seems to be about apocalypse myth. I can't pinpoint exactly which, but I figured I'd do some reading anyway."

I wrinkled my nose. Because of course her research had to involve the End of fucking Days. "Your dad couldn't just do his research on something nice, like _regular_ heavenly cows?"

" _Regular_ heavenly cows?" She snorted.

"Or...heavenly _ponies._ "

"I knew you were going to bring that up!" Lara chuckled. "You're so predictable!"

" _I_ just drunkenly jumped off a fence to break into a library balcony at midnight," I pointed out. "If anyone here is predictable it's Miss Brooding-At-The-Library-Is-Always-The-Answer."

"I think it's just that you know me better than anyone else."

"You bet I do," I scoffed. "I could write a book. Lara Croft Depression Spirals And Where They Lead Her."

I felt her hand squeeze mine. "It really bothers you when I do that, doesn't it?"

"Maybe. Yes," I admitted. When she didn't say anything in response, I continued. "I mean, I get it. I totally do. But that's why I get help. And when I say you should too…"

Her shoulder tensed under my cheek, then relaxed.

"Okay. I'll see a therapist."

"What? Really?!" I sat up, surprised. I hadn't actually thought that would work.

"Yes," she said simply. I searched her eyes, wondering how on earth I'd managed that, when suddenly the door to the study room opened and a security guard came in, looking at us sternly.

I held up my hands in surrender, distinctly aware that I was wearing chiffon shreds.

"I can explain."

Lara looked much less concerned. "Hello, Alvin."

I stared at her. _"Alvin?!"_

"So, er, I was watching some security footage of the balcony…" The security guard looked at Lara, then his eyes flicked to me and I caught a hint of amusement.

"I can explain that, too," I said weakly.

"This is my best friend, Sam Nishimura," Lara introduced us.

I narrowed my eyes and looked back and forth between them. "The hell is this?"

"Miss Croft used to come here after hours all the time when she was a student," Alvin explained casually. "I let her in. Would have let you in as well, if I'd known you were coming."

"What?!" I demanded as Lara started to laugh. "You mean I didn't have to leap from the top of a fucking fence to a second story balcony?!"

Alvin grinned. "That was easily the most interesting thing I've ever seen on the security camera."

I glared at Lara, but she just patted my head fondly.

"Oh, don't give me that look. _I_ didn't tell you to do all that."

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** Just wanted to thank everyone for the feedback! And FYI, I have 10 chapters intended for this fic, and it will be completed by the time _ Rise of the Tomb Raider _comes out. It has to be, because I'm pretty much gonna disappear after November 10 :-P_


	7. Day 37

**Day 37**

* * *

"Sam!" Lara called, knocking loudly on my bathroom door.

"Uhh...kinda preoccupied over here!"

She waited right outside, making it very hard to focus while she shuffled papers and leaned her back against the door impatiently. I could hear the fabric of her damn shirt rubbing against the wood.

"Seriously?! Go away!" I whined. "I drank a _lot_ of water on my run this morning!"

"I think my parents were murdered."

I froze.

"I've been reading Roth's journal. He wasn't involved, but he suspected something was going on. My parents were acting strangely and secretive for a while about something, and my father would constantly feel like he was being watched, and then before they flew to Peru they were researching…"

I hastily finished up my business as she spoke and washed my hands without drying them. When I finally opened the door, Lara stood there, eyes red and face puffy.

"Oh, sweetie…" I made a move to hug her, but she maneuvered away and held up the cuneiform she'd been obsessing over for weeks.

"It has something to do with _this_ , I'm sure of it."

All this time, I'd kept Winston's suspicions to myself. I'd known that Lara would figure it own on her own, I just hadn't expected her to come to this conclusion so quickly.

She was getting better. She was healthier, she was stronger, and after going to actual therapy sessions, she was more like her old self than ever before. She was giving guest lectures, advising on university projects, and acting as a consult for the British Museum. Lara Croft was settling into a life she would have had if Yamatai hadn't happened, and I had to admit - it was really nice.

But now I saw that look in her eyes. It was the same look I saw in her when she first suggested sailing into the Dragon's Triangle. Winston's words echoed in my head.

 _Adventure always finds a Croft. Adventure always claims them._

Lara was still talking about Roth's journal. About how but Richard and Amelia Croft had kept their lips tightly sealed about everything, something they had never done with him before. Roth had become unsettled at how obsessed the couple had become about their project, to the point that they were keeping secrets and telling lies to their best friend. He had been trying to track their last few expeditions, but for the first time they never let him accompany them. He had been worried that their work was making them distant from little Lara, who was old enough to notice their distraction. And then they were gone, and Roth was left to grieve with no explanation.

Winston and Roth gathered what was left, but the inquisitive little girl in their charge grew up to be an inquisitive young woman, and they couldn't hide everything from her.

"Roth suspected that they were on the brink of discovering something big," Lara said, gripping both the journal and the cuneiform in her hands . "So big that someone was after them, someone that wanted to hide the truth. He thinks that someone killed them for what they were working on."

"Lara…"

"He wanted to investigate it further. Roth was their best friend, he would have searched the world for answers." She sighed. "But he felt like I was more important. He and Winston made me their priority, so he stopped. He kept his boat, but only took smaller, shorter jobs that kept him in Europe. Roth wanted to stay near, in case something happened to me."

Roth had made the right choice. The choice I would have made. Lara was the last living Croft, and she mattered more than people who were dead and buried. The mystery of Richard and Amelia Croft's deaths probably hung over him til his last dying breath, but at least Roth knew he'd saved their daughter from the frustration and pain of the truth.

Until Lara grew up to be so much like her parents.

"He implies here that whoever killed my parents are still out there somewhere," Lara was saying, flipping some pages. "Still guarding whatever it was my parents found. I need to figure this out, and so far _this_ is my first and only clue. Sam, I need to learn what happened to my parents!"

I sighed. It had been such a _nice_ few weeks.

"Sam?"

"That's...wow, Lara." I managed to say.

Her eyes narrowed. She was just as good at reading me as I was her.

"You...wait, did you know?"

I stammered. "W-what? How - ?"

She took a step back, realization and disappointment twisting her features.

"You didn't know about the stuff in Roth's journal but you knew my parents didn't just die in a plane crash," Lara accused. "I can tell by the look on your face. You weren't as surprised as you should have been."

"I - Lara - "

"You _knew._ " It came out almost like a sob. "Was it Winston? He's the one who told you, isn't he? He knew about my parents, Roth wrote as much. He told you, but he didn't tell me."

"Lara…"

"Roth, and Winston, and you." She looked utterly betrayed. The only family she had, all liars.

"I didn't want to upset you! You have to understand," I pleaded. "Even though I knew you'd have figured it out eventually, I just wanted you to have like, a _moment's_ peace! There was so much happening. The Reyes thing - "

"That was two weeks ago!"

"- and you're still recovering - "

"I've completed my antibiotics!" Lara cried. "I'm healthy! I'm going to a goddamn therapist! I'm not an invalid, you should have said something!"

 _I was scared to._

"Why did you keep this from me!?"

 _I was afraid you'd go running off and I'd lose you._

"Sam!"

"I was just trying to protect you," I said lamely. I wasn't just a liar, I was kind of a selfish one. "Same as Roth. Same as Winston."

"From _what?!_ " Lara exploded. "Feeling bad? Are you _joking?_ Because - because - _!_ "

She was so angry, she couldn't articulate any of the words she wanted to say. It was rare for her to get mad to the point of incoherency, but she hated being lied to. Lara took loyalty to an entirely new level, and that made any betrayal hurt worse. She turned on her heel and stomped down the stairs.

"Lara, wait! Wait!" I went after her, making it just in time to see her throw the books into her little messenger bag. I felt a tinge of fear. This was what it felt like, to have Lara run from me. "Where are you going?"

I halfway expected her not to answer. Could she do that? Just run away?

"Library," she said vaguely. I exhaled in relief.

"I'm sorry!"

She didn't respond, instead just flinging the front door open. She gaped.

Reyes was standing there on our doorstep, with a backpack and a small carry-on luggage, her hand raised as if she were about to ring the doorbell.

The three of us all just kind of stared at each other for a few moments.

" _Library,"_ Lara blurted again, before squeezing past Reyes and running off to the tube station.

Reyes watched her go, bewildered. "What on earth…?"

I took a moment to shake off the confusion and make absolutely sure I appeared as enraged as I felt.

"The hell are _you_ doing here?" I demanded acidly.

"I was kind of expecting a punch in the face or something," Reyes said, still looking where Lara had gone.

"Well, if you're asking," I offered, clenching my fist. She finally turned to me, looking appropriately and belatedly apologetic.

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"I'm not the one you should apologize to," I sneered, probably more angry than I would have been if I weren't still upset over my thing with Lara.

"No, I owe you an apology, too," she admitted. She was still standing in the open doorway and I made no indication that I was going to invite her in. Reyes had _hurt_ Lara. I mean, so had I, but that wasn't intentionally. "I had to wait until my sister had time to take in Alisha, but as soon as I could, I hopped a plane for Lara. But it wasn't like I'd been answering your texts or anything, either. And I know, I mean, you and Lara...you're close. When I hurt her, I figure I hurt you. So I'm sorry. I was a huge jerk, and I apologize for that."

I considered her for a moment. She seemed sincere, and Reyes had always had an air of finality about her. Like she was wasn't just sorry, she was 100% in on this apology, take it or leave it.

I had to forgive if I expected to be forgiven myself. So I calmed down, took her luggage from her, and rolled it in.

"Thank you," she said gratefully.

I nodded and opened the hall closet so we could stow her bags and coat. I forgot that I'd recently stuffed all my old footage in there, dating back to boarding school, and we were promptly deluged by plastic tapes and loose memory cards.

"Oops," I said sheepishly as we gathered them all and shoved them back in messily. Reyes started to walk into the living room and nearly tripped over a jade statuette of a duck from 18th century Japan. It had probably fallen off one of many surfaces in our house that were littered with random artifacts, books, filming equipment, and fashion magazines.

"Yup," Reyes said, taking a look at the Jaffa cake wrappers and spare camera lenses on our coffee table. "This is pretty much exactly how I pictured you and Lara's house to look like."

I grabbed a shopping bag that had been laying by the door and threw all the wrappers into it. Using one of our throw pillows, I swatted at our couch to make sure there weren't any crumbs on it and indicated that it was fine for her to sit. She did, amused.

"This is a nice house," she said. "Charming and vintage. I wouldn't have thought it was your style, Sam."

I shrugged stiffly. "It's definitely more Lara's thing, but it's a safe neighborhood, there's a pub just down the street I'm really into, and the tube station is right on the corner. Plus, designated parking for my BMW."

"Uh-huh. You're still mad at me."

I sighed. Now that the pleasantries were attempted and out of the way...

"Yeah, I am," I acknowledged, taking a seat in the armchair by the couch. "Lara was really upset. She's been carrying Grim, Alex, and Roth's deaths on her conscience for _ever_."

She cringed. "I know."

"And then you not only drive that knife deeper by confirming the blame, you just _had_ to imply that she was never really Roth's daughter, like she never had any right to love him like that!"

"I never meant to - "

"Oh, nooo," I scoffed. "I get it, you _accidentally_ won the gold medal in the Asshole Olympics by telling Lara it was her fault Roth never got to meet Alisha, when in reality that was on _you_. That was _your_ dick move, not Lara's."

Reyes lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. She sighed.

"Is Lara okay?"

"Yeah," I said fiercely. "But no thanks to you."

 _Or me_ , I thought to myself. But I would fix that. When Lara came back, I would do whatever it took to make things right.

"Sam, I was dick, I acknowledge that. I'm trying to make amends here. This isn't easy, would you please just...you know?"

I was kind of laying it on pretty thick. But Reyes had hit my sore spot - Lara. I supposed I could be a little more civil. She had hopped a flight, after all. That can't have been cheap, and I knew Reyes didn't exactly have a lot of money. If she was willing to make this much of an effort...

"All right," I sighed.

"I'd wanted to speak to Lara," Reyes said. "Do you know how long she'll be at the library?"

"If I had to guess, probably until the evening. I...kind of upset her, too, just now. She needs time to cool off."

"What did _you_ do?" At my expression, she backtracked. "Oookay, never mind. Forget I asked."

"Uh-huh. Want some tea?"

She smirked. "These Brits have stomped the America out of you completely, haven't they?"

"Fancy a cuppa?"

Reyes laughed and I decided that a band aid was officially placed on our little wound.

"No, thanks. Never been a tea person. Drove Roth nuts. I think it's actually offensive not to like tea in this country."

The idea of Reyes refusing tea, and Roth being insulted by it, was weirdly charming. They really must have been an odd couple. I could barely imagine an alternate future with the two of them living together, all domesticated and cute, with little Alisha having to deal with the culture clash.

"Does Alisha know about Roth now?" I asked. Reyes shook her head.

"She will, when I come back home with her share of the inheritance."

My eyebrows nearly shot off my forehead.

"You're accepting the inheritance! Lara will be so - !" I paused. "Wait, what? Her _share?_ "

Reyes nodded firmly. "Half of it will be plenty. It will cover all of Alisha's college tuition. I can take care of anything else she needs myself. The other half is for Roth's _other_ girl. It's only fair."

Any resentment I might have still felt towards the woman completely dissipated.

"Lara won't like that," I told her.

"Oh, don't I know it," she chuckled. "But my daughter is officially Roth's sole heir, and Alisha's a minor, so her inheritance comes through me first. The estate is under _my_ control. That means what I say goes, whether Lara likes it or not. And what I say is that Alisha and Lara split it fifty-fifty."

I couldn't help but smile at her. "You know Lara's rich on her own, right? She has a huge trust she'll have access to when she turns twenty-five. When Lara said she didn't need his inheritance, she totally meant it."

"I know all about that." Reyes rolled her eyes. "Lady Lara Croft, granddaughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, Earl of Abbingdon _._ Her ancestors have a goddamn Wikipedia page."

"Roth wanted Alisha to have all the money."

"Roth never knew _what_ he wanted," Reyes said wistfully. Her eyes clouded over for a bit and I stayed quiet, letting her reminisce in peace. "Anyway, that's my plan. Non-negotiable."

That was more than fair, and my approval of Reyes had shot up higher than ever. Still, while I'd always had a healthy respect for her, I'd never actually been with her for a conversation alone. We'd always had the crew around us, almost like a buffer. Reyes was the put-together, strong and responsible woman that everyone's parents hoped their kids would be one day. After the inheritance thing was out of the way, we didn't exactly have a lot in common.

"So...uh, how've you been?"

She grinned. "Good. Very good. I opened my own mechanic shop in Queens, and it's been keeping me real busy. Alisha's taken an interest in it as well, I may end up sending her to engineering school."

"Takes after Mom."

"I hope not!" she barked out a laugh. "I was a cop first, remember? Got into a lot of trouble before settling down with a wrench and a carjack. Hopefully her young adulthood is more like Roth's."

I raised an eyebrow. "Wasn't he a rugged explorer always running off around the world to dig up artifacts or whatever?"

"Like Lara?" Reyes grinned. "No, he wasn't like that at first. He told me he was always the bookish type. A scholar. It wasn't until he befriended Lara's parents that he started wanting more out of life. They're what got him into the artifacts business and that's…"

 _What got him killed._

"...how I met him. His travels brought him to a bar in New York, where a down-on-her-luck cop was having a drink." She was staring off into space, tugging on a loose thread at the end of her sleeve. "The rest is history, I guess."

I nodded quietly. Talk about a treasure-hunter discovering the ultimate treasure.

"So what have you been up to?" Reyes asked. "How's the documentary going?"

"It's fine. Production has mostly wrapped," I told her. "Just a bit of last minute editing left. My father is sending me some of it once it's ready, for me to look over. He's even asked me to do a bit of the editing, I didn't have to beg him for the chance or anything."

"That's great!"

"Yeah...this is probably going to be the only credit worth writing on my resume," I said. "So far it's just my part-time gig at the BBC."

"That's good though, isn't it? The BBC is big."

"Yeah, I guess."

Reyes frowned. "You're not into it."

I shrugged. "It's just, when I'm going back and forth between the salvaged Yamatai footage and filming a kid that built his pig a wheelchair, it's kind of jarring how these two things are _both_ my life."

"Yeah, well. Life is weird, kiddo."

* * *

Lara didn't come back until seven, but when she did she had three bags of Chinese takeout and a hesitant expression on her face. I had been helping set up Reyes in the spare bedroom when I heard the door open, and I dropped the sheets unceremoniously on the bed to run down and greet her. Everything just spilled out of my mouth like word vomit.

"Lara, I'm so sorry, I should have said something, I was an idiot, you're my best friend and you deserved to know, and I don't blame you if you're mad at me, you should be, but I - "

She set the bags down on the coffee table and smiled softly at me. "Take a breath, Sam. It's okay. I understand, you were only trying to - "

"I'm an ass, it wasn't my place to keep anything from you."

She hugged me. "We're not fighting about this, okay? From now on, we tell each other everything. No secrets."

I reveled in her warmth, breathed in her scent - old books, London air, and a vague hint of soy sauce and MSG from the Golden Dragon Bistro. I let myself get lost in her for a few seconds before pulling away from the illusion. I knew better than to think Lara had just up and forgiven me this easily. She _hated_ being lied to, more than anything else.

"You had some kind of breakthrough with the cuneiform, didn't you?" I said suspiciously "That's why you're in such a good mood."

Lara grinned guiltily. "Amanda did, actually. She emailed a PDF of one of the pages to a colleague of hers, a cryptologist and symbologist from America, and he's creating a rough codex as we speak! From that, we'd be able to extrapolate _so much._ "

"I _knew_ you were too happy," I scoffed. "No wonder, there's _extrapolating_ going on."

Reyes suddenly cleared her throat from the foot of the stairs. Lara blinked at her.

"Oh. Hello…" she said weakly. "I've brought us some supper."

"Thank you," Reyes said. "Lara, I've been meaning to speak with you…"

Using my powerful sense of Chinese takeout smell, I identified the bag with my usual beef lo mein and dumplings to take up to my room. I hoped after they talked, there would still be more of this good mood leftover for later.

I busied myself going over some crappy BBC footage on my computer, mostly distracted by the funny messages Jonah was sending me at the corner of the screen, and waited as Reyes and Lara talked. Eventually I heard them both come upstairs, and I waited until I heard the guest room door close. When I stuck my head out into the hall, I could hear Reyes talking on the phone to her sister. Lara's room was silent, but the light was on under her door.

I let myself in. Predictably, she was settled in her reading nook with her ipad in her lap.

"So…?"

"I suppose she told you what she wanted to do." Lara put her ipad aside and pulled her knees to her chin, so her legs took up less room in the nook. I took that as an invitation and rolled out of the bed to plop myself onto the cushion next to her.

"Yeah. How do you feel about that?"

"I'm...all right with it. I thought she'd refuse all of it, so this is better than nothing." She grinned. "Reyes also mentioned how angry with her you were on my behalf."

"You're damn right, I was _pissed_."

Her big toe poked at my foot. "Thank you."

"I'm not mad now, though."

"Good." She leaned back. "So...I've decided to take a break from the British Museum and UCL, and I have one last speaking engagement lined up for this week, at Cambridge. Then I'm seeing Dr. Cohen to make sure my wound is one hundred percent healed, and I'll continue to see Dr. Ramirez for a couple more therapy sessions..."

There was an unspoken _"And then…"_ there that I knew was coming. I just nodded mutely.

"So I'll finally be able to dedicate some time to figuring this out." She held up her ipad, which I knew stored many gigabytes of her and her father's research. "To continuing Roth's investigation into my parents' deaths. I've turned down quite a few more opportunities at other universities and museums, but I feel like I've done enough of that already anyway. I'm ready to move on. As it turns out, I'm not fit for that kind of career, anyway."

This was it, the moment I'd been fearing since Lara woke up after her surgery. A survivor was born, back there in the Dragon's Triangle, and she was finally ready for more.

"It will take some time. I still need loads more research, but that's all I'm going to be doing for a while. I have a bit saved up from all the jobs I've taken, and Roth's inheritance will be more than enough to support me. Once I get some leads, I'll be going wherever this takes me. That's my plan."

I swallowed. "Oh."

"My father did loads of traveling towards the end. Even I remember how all-consuming this had gotten for him, sometimes he wouldn't even have time to clue in my mother before flying off. From what I'm deciphering from his and Roth's journals, plus the cuneiform code, it seems I'll be doing the same. He had been excavating sites, or else joining in on excavations all over the world. Denmark, Egypt, Tibet..."

"That actually sounds kind of fun?"

"...Peru."

"Oh. Right."

"However, it seems all the while he felt like he was being watched. My father never explicitly says who he suspects, other than it's a group of people, a covert operation, really. This shadow organization seemed to know his every move before he made it. If you read his journals, it almost sounds like the ravings of a madman...but…" She sighed. "It sounds really, really dangerous. He actually mentions outright that his work may even get him killed."

I bit my lip. "So, basically, the exact opposite of fun."

She held up the cuneiform book and showed me a word she had circled. On the next page the same lettering had been circled four times. On the next, six.

"Other than the vague references to the apocalypse myth, there is one word that Amanda's contact showed me recurs most frequently throughout the text. I don't know what it means, but those six symbols are the reason my parents are dead."

She looked excited. As crazy as it sounded, she looked like she might have been been a little bit happy about all this. Not about her parent's death or her father's paranoia, obviously, but she was very much enjoying all the research, solving mysteries, following leads and finding clues. My best friend was back in her element, and she was shining.

"As soon as I squeeze an answer out of this, I'm going to follow my father's trail," Lara told me. "But...I mean, I already know for a fact it won't be easy. It's likely that whoever got my parents will come after me. My father was onto something, he had solved a mystery and that's why they wanted them dead. That's why I've got to be careful. Minimize risk."

She meant me. She was looking at me cautiously, knowing that I understood completely. I was the risk.

"And that's why you won't want me to come with you," I stated hollowly. "You're telling me this because one day you're just going to disappear with barely a moment's notice and you think I find comfort in the fact that you're alone, but hey, you're ' _being careful'._ "

Lara hesitated. "I can't drag you around with me for something like this, Sam. My parents were _murdered_ over this. This stuff is beyond even Yamatai. It's way bigger than anything either of us could even dream, I know it is. I...don't know how deep in this I'm going to wind up. I need to know you're safe. I won't get you killed just because I enjoy your company."

But I didn't just enjoy her company, I _needed_ her. Almost everything I did, for years, I did with her, for her, because of her. I left my home and my life to get on some dingy boat with a bunch of lovable weirdos, just for her.

It did occur to me that at some point, Lara Croft had become my whole world. I didn't want to know why the idea of her leaving me behind, for God knew how long, was such a daunting thought.

Except I did know, and all it took for me to realize was for Lara to sit across from me and tell me it was finally time for her to go.

 _Jesus fucking Christ._

"You know, I don't exactly want you killed either." My voice was weak. Strangled. She wouldn't leave for a while yet, but it already felt like she was as good as gone.

"Duly noted." She chuckled nervously, making my heart beat faster. I was so far from laughing that I couldn't even make sense of the sound. Lara had basically just told me she was going to see this through, whether or not it led to the mouth of hell.

"What are you thinking, Sam?" Lara tried to catch my eye, which had started to look away. She took my hands again, but I pulled back and took a deep breath. That startled her. "Sam?"

"Why?"

She stared at me. "Why what?"

 _Why do you have to do this? Why do you have to feel this way?_

 _Why do I feel this way about you?_

I wouldn't be able to stop myself. Talking to Lara about absolutely anything and everything on my mind was so natural and normal that it just flew off my tongue. I never needed a filter with her before, but since Yamatai I had all of a sudden found myself hiding thoughts, suppressing feelings. It was driving me _crazy_.

"Lara, your parents are dead and buried!" I blurted. She looked like I'd slapped her, and I admit I probably could have started my train of thought a little better, but I had to keep going with it, or else the confused silence would be even worse. "They couldn't have wanted this for you! I _know_ Roth and Winston didn't want this. Why are you running off into danger for their sake?!"

Lara's legs withdrew from where they had become tangled with mine.

"I thought you of all people would understand."

"What could there possibly be to understand?" I demanded, swinging myself around and jumping back to my feet. I felt like I needed to be taller. There were too many emotions, too many realizations to organize in my head that I just had to explode at her about _something_. "You're talking about a conspiracy! A deadly one! One that's going to get you hurt again - or _worse_. Why can't you just let this go!?"

"Because they're my parents, Sam! My family!"

" _I'm_ your family!"

I almost just said it, right then and there.

 _I love you._

Lara grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I had to pull it away, I almost couldn't bare the touch.

I _loved_ her.

"You are. You _are_ my family _,_ " she said desperately. "But my father went from world-renown archaeologist to international laughing stock, all because he dared to think big and dream bigger. After all that we've seen, after discovering he was right, how can I not do this?"

The curse of the Crofts - to think big and dream bigger.

"Now that I know that truth about my parents..." Lara put a hand on her chest. Maybe her heart was pounding out from her ribcage like mine was. "Look, I managed to keep you from Himiko. You said it yourself. I saved you. Despite every horrible thing I've done, despite all the awful things done to us, at least I saved _you._ "

"Your parents are _dead,"_ I repeated.I was being awful and callously blunt with her. Nothing I was saying was coming out as gently as it could have. "You can't save your parents!"

"No, but at least...I want to at least save _something_."

It wasn't like I didn't understand. Lara needed her closure. She wanted to say that despite everything that had happened with her family, at least she was able to right some kind of wrong. Maybe that meant redeeming her father's name in the eyes of the archaeological world and avenging the deaths of her family. Maybe it meant discovering something that would change the world.

But there were other things at play here. That pain-in-the-ass affinity for adventure, that nagging part of Lara's brain that made her want to constantly throw herself into disaster. The larger than life feeling that she'd gotten a taste of on our old trips around the world, and a huge bite of while stranded in the Dragon's Triangle. Now she wanted more. Yamatai was a gateway drug, and now she was obsessed. She'd found a new meaning to her life, outside of the boring, humdrum London.

Outside of me.

"I can't be okay with this, Lara." And she had to know I wouldn't be. Even if she didn't feel like I did, even if she could leave me behind so easily, she still knew me better than anyone else.

"I know you're worried about me," she said. "But I can't just work here. I'm not an academic anymore. I'm not like Alister. Maybe I never was. I can't just sit around doing nothing."

"Like me."

"What?"

I looked at her stonily. Sitting around doing nothing? Is that what she thought this was? Hanging out with our friends, doing all that normal work with the universities and museums, living a normal life? _My_ kind of life, she thought that was nothing? If that's what she thought of what I wanted, then God only knew what she really thought of me. She could never have feelings for a person that sat around 'doing nothing'.

"Sorry for _boring_ you."

"Sam, that's not what I mean. I more than appreciate you - "

"No, I get it. You've been captive long enough in my house, please feel free to jump at the first chance of freedom," I said bitterly. "I'm glad you finally get to break out of here. Enjoy."

I walked out, feeling like a huge part of myself had broken off and lay there abandoned on Lara's floor.


	8. Day 39

**Day 39**

* * *

Avoiding Lara felt wrong. It was like I was going against a natural instinct to not barge into her room and distract her with tales about the weirdos I saw on my morning jog, or text her every random Channing Tatum-related thought in my head, or make fun of her when she walked into a wall because she was too embroiled in whatever research was on her iPad.

I honest-to-God saw that happen and didn't even _say_ anything.

There wasn't any actual fighting going. We still never really understood how to do that with each other. Whenever we happened to be in the hall at the same time, we just quickly ducked away. If our eyes accidentally met, there was a slight nod, and _then_ we ducked away. One time, I couldn't stop the "Hi" that erupted from my mouth in the kitchen, and she awkwardly smiled at me. Before anything else could happen, I ran.

I was angry with her, I knew I was. But I also knew that she felt bad about it, and I felt bad about her feeling bad, and there was a very good likelihood that Lara felt bad for making me feel guilty about making her feel bad.

Long story short, we were being complete idiots and we were both well aware of this, but neither of us knew how to fix it.

When I tried to tell all this to Jonah via FaceTime, he just laughed.

The number one thing I missed most about Jonah was how relaxed he handled everything. It was like his presence surrounded everyone in a bubble of chill. I'd explained everything about Lara's obsession, how she wanted to leave me behind in London, and our falling out. The way he just absorbed it all made me feel like a little bit of the stress was being lifted off my chest.

"You little birds are hopeless," he chuckled.

"Tell me about it."

I was at work and had my phone on full display on the desk. Technically, I was on the clock and it wasn't even a private office, more like a public workspace packed with computer terminals. There were two other grunts there, but they had headphones on and were too busy getting away with their own non-work-related activity on company time. None of us cared all that much if someone came in and saw us screwing around during business hours. That's how little this job meant.

"Sam, you can't keep going on like this," Jonah said. "You're in love with her."

I swallowed. I had never even said the words out loud. Hell, I barely even thought it without shuddering. It was terrifying to have those words inside me, like a growth layered in fear and anxiety and disappointment. Love was supposed to be a wonderful feeling, something light and airy and smile-inducing, just like how it rolled off Jonah's tongue. I almost smiled myself, hearing him say it.

Almost.

"God, Jonah, I haven't even said anything about that."

But yeah, I was pretty deeply in love with her. There was that.

"You don't have to," he snorted, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and not even worth discussing. "I'm not stupid. Let's skip to the good part - how you're going to make up with Lara."

"I don't know!" I groaned, letting my forehead thunk down on the desk. "I want to, but I'm so mad at her! She's crazy. Absolutely insane. It'd one thing if she wanted to, like, drive a flaming oil tanker into a volcano or something with at least a minimal survival rate. But right now she's chasing ghosts straight into hell and all I want from her is to _not do that_. Literally, just one thing, and she won't even do that for me. I can't expect anything more. Not when stuff like that is more important to her than me."

Jonah was silent for a moment before responding.

"Are you really mad at her for wanting to go, or for wanting to go without you?"

I frowned. "Both."

"But one more than the other."

Normally his insightfulness was endearing, but sometimes it did bug me that he seemed to sort out my feelings better than I did. I mean, they were _my_ freaking feelings.

"I might be more annoyed by the fact that she wants to leave me behind," I admitted. "Since the day we met, she never did that. It makes me feel like...I'm nothing. Worthless and boring and nothing."

Since I met her, Lara Croft had been on the rise. Sure, I had helped pull her out of her shell, but whether or not I did that, she was going to grow. She would get smarter, she would get stronger, and she would just keep going. I, on the other hand, was that popular party girl that peaked in college. We were moving in different directions now, and I was too stupid to see it coming.

Jonah shifted uncomfortably in the background. He didn't like seeing anyone upset.

"Well, I think it goes without saying that you're none of those things."

"I am when compared to Lara," I said bitterly. "Although I guess no one compares to her."

"The same could be said about you," he said sagely. "Sam, you may feel like you two are as different as the sun and the moon, but remember that they both travel the same sky."

Before I could properly think on that, the door to the computer lab opened. This was shocking, since literally no one bothered to descend into the bowels of our corporate building other than lowly bottomfeeders like us. My coworkers were just as startled as I was. They even pulled off their headphones to turn and stare.

A very large, bald man in comically small glasses and a smartly tailored strolled in. He barely glanced at my two fellow part-timers, who had quickly minimized their Facebook homepages, before zeroing in on me. I hastily pushed my iPhone under my keyboard and prayed that Jonah had the sense not to say anything. Whoever this guy was, he looked way more important than our supervisor, who had actually stepped out to get stoned on his lunch break.

The man came over to me, a broad grin plastered on his face.

"You must be Samantha Nishimura!" He took a seat at the empty computer terminal next to mine and held out a massive hand. I tentatively shook it. "My name is Walter Pullman."

I blanched. Mr. Pullman was my boss's _boss's_ boss. He was my boss _cubed_ , just under James Harding himself as sub-director of BBC news. He was also a renown Pullitzer prize winner and all-around news network big shot. My mouth went dry. What could he possibly want from me? I may not have cared all that much about my job, but getting fired from the BBC because _Walter fucking Pullman_ caught me video chatting New Zealand probably wouldn't look good to future employers.

"It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Pullman. What can I do for you?"

His grin somehow got even wider.

"Miss Nishimura, I believe the question is what can _I_ do for _you?_ "

"I'm...sorry?"

Mr. Pullman leaned his bulk backwards in the computer chair, causing it to squeak in agony.

"I was speaking to one of your supervisors this week, wondering if any of his crew would be fit for a little promotion to our front offices. An assistant position opened up recently. Full time, full benefits."

That was a surprise. I wasn't even really an employee, just a part-timer called in when the crew needed a dogsbody. None of what I did was particularly impressive, it was just an entry-level resume filler. There was absolutely no reason I should have stuck out among the rest of the crew. Even the other two dorks gaping at me from behind their monitors were probably just as qualified.

Unless Mr. Pullman was a fan of all the Yamatai hubbub.

"Imagine my embarrassment when I discovered we had an _actual_ Nishimura on staff! At an entry level position, of all places!"

Okay. This was even worse than him being a Yamatai fan.

"The daughter of Toru Nishimura, right here in my department! I was always a huge fan of your father's work, and I have a strong respect for what his company has done to revolutionize international media. You don't understand how mortified I was when I realized I had his daughter doing lowly camera operation and video editing!"

"Um, it's really fine, Mr. Pullman. I'm actually very good at it."

"I don't doubt you excel at everything you do, Miss Nishimura," he assured me. "But I would be remiss if I didn't extend this promotion to you personally."

I winced. Nishimura Entertainment was a huge multinational corporation that had footholds all over the world. In my line of work, it would have been hard to avoid the influence of my father. I really and truly enjoyed the family fortune, I wasn't going to make up any lies about that. But when it came to filmmaking, preferential treatment made me uncomfortable. If I was going to make it, I wanted it to be because I was a fucking superstar, and not because my dad was the kingpin of Japanese media.

"Are you sure? I haven't even been working here all that long. Almost immediately after graduating I went away to document an archaeological expedition - "

"Indeed! Who hasn't heard of the fabled Yamatai!" He said it excitedly, as if he had just been dying for me to bring it up. Which, of course, he had been. "We all can't wait to see _Tomb Raider_ when it's released. I understand that your father's company has strict rights to the property, but I'm sure we can negotiate a little something. The BBC would love to have any exclusive bits you're allowed to offer."

Well, this had all become depressingly transparent. Mr. Pullman was practically drooling over his triple chins.

"I'm not so sure about that, sir." I didn't know exactly how much pull I actually had with my father, but he wasn't the only one clutching _Tomb Raider_ in an iron fist. The documentary was going to make bank for his company, and that was in large part because of me. It may be produced by Nishimura Entertainment, but Yamatai was _my_ story. It was _my_ movie. I wasn't about to break off any more pieces to give anyone else.

"I apologize if I overstepped," Mr. Pullman said quickly, not sounding particularly apologetic to me. "All the same, the offer still stands. You would have an office, vacation days, the opportunity to regulate the flow of day-to-day..."

He listed for me the many things I would have if I worked at the BBC office. After the parking space and retirement plan, I just sort of glazed over. What he was proposing was a grown-up desk job. Every weekday I would dress myself in business attire, carry a briefcase and overpriced latte into my office, and sit at my desk taking calls until my next promotion. From there, it would be lather, rinse, repeat until I hit the top and had my name on every influential documentary we made, no matter how little I contributed outside of money. It was the woman I was probably meant to become, decided by fate from the day I was born a Nishimura.

I hesitated.

"Mr. Pullman, I'm very grateful for this opportunity, but may I have the weekend to consider it?"

"What is there to consider?" he wondered. "A bright young woman like you coming out of one of the most prestigious schools in England, this is the perfect fit!"

"I understand if you need to fill the position quickly - "

"Not at all," he said, disappointed, but still too lenient. This guy really wanted someone on his staff with a foot in the Nishimura Entertainment door. "Take the weekend. Give it some thought, and I look forward to your call on Monday."

"Thank you, sir."

He shook my hand again and struggled back to his feet. Our crappy old chairs weren't exactly ergonomic, and just one of many reasons he probably wanted to escape our little pit of an office. My coworkers unfroze and stared at me for a moment before slowly putting their headphones back on and turning to their computers. They would forget all about this once they left, focusing on where to get burritos for dinner or whatever. For them, this was only a vaguely interesting anecdote to their day. For me, it was potentially life-changing.

I just sat there. I had a couple days to consider the offer, but he had been right - what was there to consider? Most new college grads dreamed of something like this, and had to kiss ass for years to struggle up the ladder. Not only had my name granted me an express ticket, the boss was practically kissing _my_ ass.

But something was holding me back, and normally when I was this conflicted, I jumped onto Lara's bed and bounced until she paid attention to me. She was always there for me when I had a crisis to talk out. Except now.

"Did that guy look as stuffy as he sounded?"

I jumped, completely forgetting that I'd shoved Jonah under the keyboard.

"Sorry."

"It's okay. I memorized the serial number of that thing. Made in Thailand, you know."

Actually, I did know. I'd sat here in boredom long enough to have idly flipped the keyboard around several times.

"What should I do?" I asked him. Maybe he could help. I'd already spilled my guts to him, why not add on a little more?

"Well, what do you want?"

I shrugged. "I guess the promotion will keep me busy while Lara is away."

"What do you _want?_ " he repeated.

"I don't think that really matters anymore," I said bitterly, thinking about what I wanted with Lara. I wanted to wake up in the morning and argue about her horrid breakfast habits. I wanted to tease her about how she was the only person who still used goddamn _bookmarks_ and I wanted her to tease me about being 'blonde in spirit'. I wanted her to worry about me when I went out with friends she didn't know and end up coming to the bar later because she wanted to make sure I was okay. I wanted to watch her try and fix the sink, because _how hard could it be, honestly,_ and then wrap her in towels when she got hilariously deluged in dirty water. I wanted to end every day at her side, fighting over whether or not to cancel our HBO subscription. That's all I wanted. "I'm going to have to get over what I want and just deal with what _is._ "

"Sam, please. Just talk to Lara."

I sighed. He was a dear but it was starting to get late, and whether or not it actually mattered to anyone, I really should have finished up the burst pipe project. If I wrapped that quickly, I would probably have enough time left to edit the funny Vine compilation for tomorrow's Saturday morning show that no one would watch.

"Jonah, I've got to go."

"Talk to Lara. Before you make a huge mistake."

"I've already made the mistake," I grumbled. "Now I just have to pick up the pieces and move on."

* * *

When I got home, no one was at the house. Lara and Reyes had gone to Croft Manor for the day to look through Roth's things. I'd purposely asked to come into work, so no one would be obligated to extend an awkward invite. Visiting Winston would have been so much fun, but the two hour drive with Lara would have been too much. Especially with Reyes there, scrutinizing us.

Instead, I immersed myself in the _Tomb Raider_ documentary. It was just last minute touch-ups at this point, not even considered a rough edit anymore. My father and uncle had given me much more responsibility on this project than I had initially asked, and the thought of my name being in the credits of such a huge undertaking was kind of daunting. I was proud of myself. Someone had to be, since my family never really concerned themselves with that sort of thing and Lara was, well, busy with her own stuff.

She was going her own way, maybe it was time for me to find mine.

Mr. Pullman's offer still loomed at the forefront of my mind. That job was the first step on a climb straight up the BBC's corporate ladder. Being an assistant was nothing to celebrate, but it wouldn't be long before the next promotion, and then the next. With a little luck, a little charm, and my dependable family name, I could easily end up running the place. That wasn't arrogance, that was just fact. I could schmooze with the best of them, talk my way into and out of anything, and it was clear that they already really wanted me.

I sighed. The clip I had paused on my screen featured Dr. Whitman looking out over the side of the Endurance at the sunset, musing out loud a scripted monologue about 'what mysteries lay on the horizon'. Three seconds later, Jonah and Alex would emerge from the lower deck drunk and shirtless, singing a Taylor Swift song and ruining my perfect shot. I intended to snip that part out, but save it in the private blooper reel I was going to show Lara one day - if I ever got the chance.

Without warning, my computer started beeping and Premiere Pro X shut down. The words "Fatal Error" flashed on the screen.

" _Fuck,"_ I groaned. I shut down the computer and rebooted it, to no avail. Even doing a clean install did nothing, the application kept throwing the words "Fatal Error" at me. About half an hour of haplessly googling solutions later, I finally called Zip, my personal tech nerd since college. After four rings I was prepared to leave a pleading voicemail, but he eventually did pick up, sounding irritated.

"Sam, it's 2013. Why are you still calling people on the phone? Why can't you just text like a normal person?"

"I need your help."

"Are you in grave danger?" he asked distractedly. I could hear the tapping of his fingers on an XBox controller. "Because I have a galaxy to save, you know. The Crucible is in Earth space and Reapers are converging on its location."

I had no idea what that meant.

"Yes," I decided to say. "One might even call my situation _fatal._ "

"Premiere Pro X is showing 'Fatal Error' again, isn't it?"

"Help meeee," I whined.

"Did you - _fuck!_ "

"What?"

"Fucking _banshees_ is what. Banshees and Brutes everywhere, I can't even see the fucking rocket battery!"

"Zip _."_

"Did you try turning it off and on again?"

"I'm not _middle-aged_ ," I rolled my eyes. "It happened when I was editing a clip, and now it just barely gets past the start-up loading screen before the error pops."

We went back and forth for a while, with him offering up suggestions as he shot at Reapers and Banshees, and my giving it a try as I listened to him save the galaxy over speakerphone. In the end, he decided I needed to update a driver of some sort, because of an incompatibility with some thingamajig.

"Where's Naya?" I asked conversationally. The driver download was taking its sweet time, and it had been a while since I hung out with just Zip.

"Out at her temp job. That's all either of us have been able to land since graduation. She's at the Natla Technologies building at Park Royal. Should be home soon, though."

"That doesn't sound like a bad gig. Natla Tech is really huge, isn't it?"

"She's a _temp_ ," Zip reminded me. "She's out on the streets by Christmas. Same as me, actually. My tech support contract is up by the end of the year. Neither of us have any guarantee to be taken on full time after this."

I frowned. All of our friends from college were having a hard time finding good employment after graduation, even after all these months. Even Alister and Amanda, who had stuck to working for the university, were becoming disillusioned at their low-paying, low-reward jobs. I could tell that Amanda in particular was starting to get as restless as Lara.

"I'm sorry."

"Well, I'm glad at least you and Lara have stuff going for you," Zip said. "I mean, I know your part-time thing at the BBC isn't all that great and Lara's getting bored with all those lectures and museum stuff, but once your documentary is released - _cha-ching!_ "

"Yeah, well," My eyes tracked the loading bar inching it's way across my screen. I didn't want to mention my promotion offer, or the fact that I hadn't spoken to Lara in almost two days. Zip wasn't exactly the heart-to-heart kind of friend. He was a lovable blabbermouth, and I didn't want my life story center stage until I had everything figured out for myself. " _Tomb Raider_ hype will die down by early next year. Then we'll be in the same boat as everyone else."

Unless I took the position from Walter Pullman.

"Maybe. Hey, speaking of boats, Naya and I have been talking…"

"About what?"

"Are you and Lara secretly hooking up?"

I nearly fell off my chair. " _Jesus_ , Zip!"

"Oh, come on. You know I have no filter."

"Th-that is just…" I sputtered. "What does that even have to do with boats?!"

"I don't know. You guys were on a boat."

"I swear to God - "

"So...you're not hooking up?"

" _Zip!"_

I was blushing so hard that I was about to melt right through my desk chair and into the floor. It was different than when Jonah had called me out on it earlier. Zip was always so blunt, to the point that a lot of the time he was off-base or accidentally offending someone. He was never malicious or anything about it, though. His heart was always in the right place. It was his goddamn mouth that was the problem. He lucked out finding a girlfriend like Naya that tolerated it and toned him down a little.

"Is that a yes or a no?" he wondered, casually. I could even still hear him zapping aliens in the background. Calling him instead of hauling my ass to the Apple Genius Bar wasn't seeming like such a great idea now.

"We are not together," I said, ready to hang up.

"But you're so into her."

"Shut up." I scowled. It looked like everyone was in on this but me. That was pretty typical, actually. "It's a moot point, anyway. Lara's life plan doesn't exactly mesh with mine."

"Doesn't she want to, I don't know, travel the world discovering all this random shit?"

"That's the short version, yeah."

"And don't you want to travel the world documenting random shit on film?"

"Would you just - !?" I sighed, applying pressure to the bridge of my nose, where a headache was threatening. "Film isn't just running around with a camera. It's an art _and_ a business. There's filming, editing, and cinematography, but also production, regulations, contracts, promotion, distribution - "

"Don't tell me you _want_ to do all that." I could hear him scoffing at me through the speakerphone. "Nah, I know you. You're just like the rest of us, half-assing everything until something better comes along."

I fell silent. Zip the alien killer was making a little too much sense. This was why I wasn't jumping at the chance to be promoted.

I _enjoyed_ running around with my camera and actually filming things that should be filmed. My father considered it grunt work. He didn't want me to be some deadbeat starving artist-type, he wanted bigger things for the heir to Nishimura Entertainment, and clearly Walter Pullman agreed. But I had found my passion in it. Turning something boring into something interesting, something amazing into something unbelievable. That was what my work was - transforming the truth into a truth actually worth knowing.

I hadn't found anything worth doing, worth filming, so that's why I was just wasting time at the BBC. Half-assing, like Zip said, at a passionless job just so I could say I was doing something. This wasn't what I was looking for. Lara, on the other hand, had found something worth doing. Something worth not half-assing. And here I was, guilting her for wanting to pursue something she cared about, instead of just going through the motions here in London.

It was reckless. It was dangerous. It was extraordinarily stupid, to get wrapped up in some conspiracy that had already taken lives of people she'd loved. But it was something that actually _mattered._

That's what she had been trying to say to me the other day. But I had taken it so personally, let my feelings for her make everything she said more painful to hear. I thought she didn't want to be around me anymore. I thought I was boring her. I _was_ boring, but not because of anything I did, it was because of what I _wasn't_ doing - something that mattered.

"Sam? Hello? Did you get cut off?"

I had pushed her away out of selfishness. She hadn't been trying to hurt me, but I had lashed out anyway. I had realized I was in love with my best friend, and was so wrapped up in it that I reacted in the worst way.

"Hey, Sam?"

"I'm here," I whispered. I had to talk to Lara.

"Oh, okay. Did the driver update finish downloading? It had to have by now, otherwise you guys seriously need to think about upgrading your internet speeds."

"It's just about done," I croaked. I understood now, how Lara felt. Me, sitting in an office drinking coffee and negotiating contracts all day, the thought of it was now making my stomach churn. And that would have been Lara, if she had decided to live a 'normal' life in London. Working with executives wasn't me, and none of my friends wanted that for me. How could I have wanted this for Lara?

"Cool, cool, cool. Here's what you do next…"

He talked me through installing the driver and reinstalling the video editor. Soon, the application was running again, even smoother than before.

But I wasn't thinking about that anymore. Zip had just given me another stunning revelation - had Yamatai really changed us? Or did the experience just turn us into the people were were meant to be? Lara couldn't stay in London and live this life, but neither could I.

Jonah's words echoed in my head.

 _You may feel like you two are as different as the sun and the moon, but remember that they travel the same sky._

Well, maybe if the big lug didn't talk like a fucking fortune cookie! He'd seen this all along, but had been hesitant to force me into it. If only he was as blunt and obnoxious as Zip.

Premiere Pro X automatically loaded up the clip where I had left off and it began to play. As if on cue, Jonah and Alex appeared on the deck shirtless and waving their beers at Dr. Whitman.

" _WE ARE NEVER EVER EVERRR GETTING BACK TOGETHERRRR!"_

" _What the bloody - cut! Don't film this! Cut, Sam!"_

" _Don't you dare, Sam!"_

My camera swiveled around to focus on Lara, who had joined us on deck. She was practically in tears laughing.

" _Don't stop filming!"_ She had her own iphone up, taking her own video of the scene unraveling before her. The scene I wasn't filming, because I had the camera locked on her and her wide grin, glowing in the sunset.

When she noticed, she chuckled and grabbed the front of the lens.

" _If you're going to be the greatest filmmaker ever, you're going to have to learn how to pick your subjects."_

She forced the camera away from her so I could shoot the boys. Jonah had hoisted Dr. Whitman over his shoulder and Alex was trying to trickle some of his beer into his mouth.

After a few seconds, the camera wandered back to Lara. She had stopped watching the boys. Instead, she had been gazing at me, smiling.

I paused the clip.

"Zip?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. So much," I said. "For everything."

"Sure."

"No, really. You…" I breathed. "You just helped me...a lot."

He snorted. "Damn, it's just a driver update. What's your deal, Sam?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, never mind."

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** At this point I should probably come clean and admit I know nothing about the documentary business or pretty much anything about filming or whatever lol. Well, two more and then probably a little epilogue coming up!_


	9. Day 40

**Day 40**

* * *

Lara came home late from Croft Manor, so late that it probably wasn't a good idea for me to barrage her with feelings. Instead of greeting them, I listened from my room as she and Reyes crept upstairs quietly, trying not to wake me.

Ironically, I proceeded to stay up most of the night anyway, staring at the ceiling with my mind racing until about three in the morning. At some point I actually did doze off, because next thing I knew it was after four and I was awakened sharply by the loudest screeching I had ever heard in my life. I sat bolt upright in my bed as the fire alarm stabbed at my ear drums.

Fucking _Lara_ had insisted that since the house was older than Jesus, we had to get the best ones on the market. I hadn't realized that 'best' really just met meant 'loud enough to raise the dead'.

"Oh, shit!" I shook the sleep from my brain and realized the alarms were going off because of the _smoke_ billowing into my room from the hall.

Ignoring every rule about fire safety I'd learned growing up, I immediately threw open my door and bounded outside. I was promptly enshrouded in thick, grey smoke.

"Sam?"

I could barely make out Reyes through the darkened hall. She had been woken up by the alarm, too.

"Reyes! What happened?!"

"Hell if I know!"

"Where's Lara?!"

"Do I look like the fucking leading expert on this situation!?" she demanded.

The smoke was coming from behind Lara's closed door. I raced across the hall and grabbed at the knob. It was hot, which I knew was a very bad sign. I banged on the door desperately.

" _Lara!"_

" _Sam!"_ Relief rushed through my veins at the sound of her voice.

"Lara, get out of there!"

I heard her coughing. "They jammed the door somehow! I can't open it!"

Reyes pulled out her phone. "Sam, what's the British version of 9-1-1?!"

It actually took me a second to think of it. Until now, my go-to for emergencies was just texting Lara.

"9-9-9!"

"On it!" She plugged one of her ears with a finger so she could hear the phone as Lara and I yelled across the door. She wheezed. "God, I can't breathe in here. My asthma."

I turned to her. "Get outside, Reyes! Go!"

"But - !"

I forcefully shoved at her until she willingly went down the stairs, babbling at the emergency dispatcher. Then I went back to Lara.

" _Who_ jammed the door?!" I shouted.

" _I have no bloody idea!"_

"How could - ?!" Something in her room cracked and crashed to the floor. _"Lara!"_

"Someone must have broke into - " She went into a coughing fit and I slammed my fist against the door in frustration. "Sam, they destroyed all of it! All my research! I have to try and save it!"

I kicked at her door. The lock may have been jammed, but this was an old, crusty house. The bottom of the door had some give to it.

"Are you _nuts?!_ " I savagely kicked again, but the door wasn't breaking. It was too old and warped, the wood was just bending like it was made of rubber.

"Sam, you've got to stop doing that, it's burning on my side now. You won't be able to get it open!"

I kicked it one more time anyway. "You have to get out of there!"

"They set my books on fire! Trashed my laptop and ipad!"

Fuck. She was never going to leave willingly without her stuff.

"How did they even get in?!"

"The window, probably. They must have climbed the tree outside and jumped in from there." I could hear the strain in her voice. It was getting harder for her to breathe. I remembered reading somewhere that people who died in fires more often than not died from smoke in their lungs, not from actually burning.

"Are you - Lara, _go out through the fucking window!_ "

"I have to get my - !"

" _Lara!"_ She was too determined to save all her damn research. She probably thought she could rescue at least some of it and make some daredevil escape, which she probably could, but I was not about to let her take that chance. The smoke was getting to be too much.

Shit. I bolted outside, where Reyes was staring up at Lara's window in terror. There were _actual visible flames._

"The firefighters will be here soon," Reyes told me. "What's Lara doing up there?! She could jump out the window onto that tree!"

"She _being Lara_ ," I groaned, picturing her scrambling around trying to collect as many documents and back-up hard drives as she could carry. Lara might not be able to save herself from this. Not if she was too focused on something else.

I ran to my BMW and threw open the trunk.

"What are you - oh, my God."

I held Lara's climbing axe in my hand, tightening my grip on the makeshift handle that she had reinforced with canvas and string and whatever else she could salvage while we were on Yamatai. Reyes recognized it immediately.

"You still have that thing!?"

I didn't answer, instead also pulling out my camera equipment and emptying out the large nylon bag. I headed for the tree by Lara's window and buried the axe high over my head, deep into its trunk.

"Sam, the firefighters will be here any minute - "

" _They_ won't be able to get her out of there," I said grimly. With the bag slung over my shoulder, I hoisted myself up with the axe until I could reach the lowest branch of the tree. From there I was able to loosen the axe and repeat until I was high enough to see into Lara's window from a branch. I paused for only a second when I noticed something carved there, in the trunk of the tree.

An apple?

I couldn't dwell on the strangeness of this carving, though. I inched my way across and closer to her room.

"Careful," Reyes called from below. My weight was causing the branch to bow slightly, and I realized this was the second time in as many weeks that I found myself teetering high off the ground while going after my best friend.

One of the windows in her reading nook was broken, and the other was wide open. I jumped, catching the axe on her window sill.

"Shit, Sam!" Reyes cried out. This was insane. Absolute madness. A small part of me actually wished I'd thought to give Reyes my camera and have her film us.

"I'm okay!" I called, pulling myself up until I could tumble into the nook. It was like fucking Dante's Inferno in there. Lara's room was almost completely on fire, books, furniture, her bed, _everything._ Whatever wasn't engulfed in flames had already been blackened with smoke. The crackling of the flames was deafening. I couldn't even _see_ her.

"Lara!" I shouted, shoving aside some charcoal and ash that probably used to be some ancient artifact. At the center of the room, I saw a small pile of her things. A mostly melted laptop. Her cracked ipad. A journal with its edges singed. Some shattered picture frames. _"Lara!"_

"I'm here, Sam," she coughed, her voice hoarse.

"Oh, God."

She was on her knees, practically crawling as she clutched a small wooden box in her fist. I pulled her to her feet, starting to cough myself. The smoke was so thick, I couldn't understand how she had managed to breathe for this long. It stung my eyes and coated the inside of my throat.

"I can't leave these. I can't lose any more," she pleaded, the sound more wheezing that words. But I understood.

"I know," I said. I grabbed the random bits of stuff she'd collected and shoved them into my equipment bag. I knew she wouldn't leave until she'd saved all she could. "Breathe, Lara. Fuck, I gotta get you out of here."

"I'm...fine…"

I held her by the waist and dragged her to the window.

"Liar, liar, pants on - "

She glared.

"Oh, too soon?"

Her expression changed to one of horror.

"Wait! Dad's journal! It's still on my desk!"

"No - _Lara!_ " I held her tighter and tried to pull her to the window. "Listen, in case you haven't noticed, your room is basically 99% decrepit crumbling papers and it is _all on fire_. The firefighters will be here in a minute!"

"Dad's journal doesn't have a minute!" She broke free and staggered towards the charred remains of something desk-like where her desk used to be. I followed, but she stopped so abruptly that I plowed into her.

Under her desk were three large plastic bottles duct taped together. They were filled with some kind of liquid, and the bottles were slowly expanding from the heat.

"I...I don't suppose that's just how you store your water."

"That's not mine."

The cap popped off one of the bottles, releasing unknown gasses into the fiery room.

"Gotta go!" I grabbed her and forced back to the window. "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go! Now would be a _really_ good time to show off your superhero skills!"

Lara grit her teeth and, despite barely being able to walk just moments before, wrapped an arm around me. I held her back and we leapt out the window, our arms flailing for anything to grab onto.

I managed to snag onto the branch, and Lara got a hold of my leg. We could hear the sirens of the fire trucks bearing down on our formerly quiet little street. By now, lights had come on in other people's windows, and neighbors were coming out onto the sidewalk.

Little old Mrs. Robbins from across the street was with Reyes, demanding to know who she was. Reyes shook her off in annoyance.

"Lara, let go of Sam so she can climb down!"

She had evidently gone back into the house and pulled off all the cushions and pillows from the couch and arm chairs we had in the living room, and arranged them into a large pile under the tree.

Lara let go and landed safely, groaning and rolling away. Reyes helped her up and Mrs. Robbins in her ruffly nightgown and fuzzy slippers said something vaguely racist about terrorists.

Reyes's eye's widened at something above me.

"Sam, oh my God, you have to - "

Lara's room exploded outwards, launching shards of glass and splinters of wood into the street.

* * *

"I hate stitches."

"It'd be weird if you _liked_ stitches."

Reyes glared at me. The emergency room doctor also gave me a look.

"Young lady, perhaps it would be best if you waited outside until I'm finished with your friend."

I held up both hands. "All right, all right. Lara and I will be in the waiting room, Reyes."

"Yeah, yeah."

She held out her arm so the doctor could suture where the window glass had fallen and left several deep lacerations. Surprisingly, I had come away from this whole thing with barely a scratch where my hands had rubbed against the tree bark. Lara had suffered a little smoke inhalation, but it was nothing a good nebulizer treatment and a little supplemental oxygen in the ambulance couldn't fix. I felt guilty that it would be Reyes walking away from this with actual scars.

I left the exam room and wandered back to the waiting area. Lara wasn't where I had left her and the police, who had quickly swarmed in to interrogate her the minute she'd pulled off her oxygen mask. A mild panic set in when I realized she wasn't in the bathroom, or the hall with the vending machines either. I ran out of the ER and squinted into the street. The sun was only just starting to rise. My car was still parked out front, and Lara was there, sitting in the backseat.

"Hey," I said softly. I stood by her and leaned against the car.

"Is Reyes okay?"

"Yeah, they cleaned her off and picked out the glass. They're just stitching her up now and she'll be as good as new."

She sighed. "Just another thing to add to the list of reasons she should hate me."

"Reyes doesn't hate you."

"She _should_."

"This wasn't your fault, Lara. This was done to you."

When we arrived at the hospital and it was clear that Lara and I were fine, the police interrogated us. It was obvious, though, that neither of us knew entirely what had gone down.

Lara had been asleep when it happened. She was awoken by the sound of the fire alarm, just like Reyes and I. She hadn't even realized anyone had broken into her room until she saw her windows were broken wide open. Somehow, without waking her, someone had snuck into her bedroom, set everything on fire, threw her laptop and ipad into the flames, and slipped out before the alarms even sensed the smoke. There was no evidence that it could have been an accident, especially after the investigators found the bottles of explosive liquid under her desk. It was clearly arson, likely with intent to kill.

When they asked if there was any reason that anyone would want to kill her and destroy all her research, Lara was surprisingly forthcoming. Yes, she was investigating her father's death. And yes, she believed all of this had to do with her getting too close to the truth.

I wasn't sure if any of them believed her, but I doubted a detective would ever find anything. No one had been able to solve the mystery yet, even after so many years. We were probably just going to end up on the news - _Celebrated Archaeologist and Heir to Nishimura Fortune Rescued From House Fire, Arsonist Still At Large_ \- and then the gossip would die down when no juicy details were recovered. Everyone would probably just chalk this up as a random act of violence against semi-famous people by a loser that wanted his own fifteen minutes of fame.

The insurance policy I took out on the house would more than take care of repairs, and we would stay at a hotel until we could live there again. All of us came out with our lives, so all things considered, this was not the worst that could happen.

But Lara looked like her world had ended.

"They got everything," she mumbled. "Burned all my books. Destroyed my laptop and ipad, and all the things I had saved on there. The cuneiform is gone. My dad's journal is gone. That was the last thing...That was all…"

She had my camera bag on her lap. I opened the zipper a little wider and looked into what she had tried to rescue in the fire.

"Zip could probably pull something off these if the drives aren't too damaged," I said, looking at her wrecked electronics. I wasn't all that certain of it, but he had performed computer miracles before.

I recognized Roth's journal, which had made it mostly unscathed, and the box of cigars she had taken from his house at Croft Manor. Other than that, she had saved some old framed pictures of her as a little girl with her parents, her with Roth and Winston, one of us together at graduation, one with the whole Endurance crew, and a funny one of us and our college friends at UCL.

"All the work I've done for over a month," Lara said hollowly. "All that research, just gone."

"Even if Zip can't save everything on here, you sent so much stuff back and forth between Alister and Amanda and all those other experts that it has to all still be there in your email," I pointed out.

"That's not nearly enough," she sighed. "I had written my thought processes, marked maps, organized passages from ancient texts, highlighted possible leads, extrapolated things from the base scripts. At one point the information was coming to me so fast I just scribbled everything down, and now all that is lost. The cuneiform journal is lost. God, _everything_ …"

I remembered in the beginning, when she was doing her research and actually still letting me in on it. She had been so excited. She loved it. It gave her a connection to people that were taken from her, not just because of their involvement, but because it just made her feel more alive. More like a Croft.

It was almost too much to bear, seeing her like this. Left with nothing. They weren't just personal belongings lost in the fire. Whoever had done this had taken a huge chunk out of what made her _Lara_.

"Thank you."

I unclenched the fists I hadn't even realized I'd made.

"Huh?"

"Thank you for coming into my room and rescuing me."

I shrugged. "It wasn't like I climbed a blizzardy mountain crawling with murderous cultists and mythical giants to expel a demon's soul out of your body or anything."

The sound she made was almost like a chuckle, mixed with a hopeless moan. I went into the backseat and hugged her, squeezed her tightly, because it felt like my arms were the only things holding Lara together.

She cried. I let her tears soak the shoulder of my shirt and just rubbed her quaking back as her every sob wrapped around my heart and clenched. I bit my lips to keep myself from crying too, because I knew what she was feeling. Her world had fallen out from under her. All she had was a bag of smoky junk.

And me.

I peered down at my camera bag and waited for her muffled gasps to slow. I swept her overly long hair away from her face and wiped her tears with my sleeve.

"I'm a failure."

"Hey. _Hey,_ " I said sternly. "No, you aren't."

"Sam - "

"No. Fuck that." I gripped her shoulders tightly and forced her to face me. "Look at me. Right now. Look me in the eye and tell me you're a failure."

She looked at me like she did in Yamatai. When she was holding me in her arms at the peak of that mountain temple, after defeating the Oni and Mathias, and destroying the soul of Himiko. I felt that sense of security. I felt safety, and relief.

 _We hadn't lost that. We still had that._

Except it was me holding her now. Her best friend, strong and alive and still with her. Living, breathing proof that Lara Croft was anything but a failure.

Her face was red and puffy, streaky and miserable. Her eyes were clouded and stormy. Maybe it was my turn to save my beautiful best friend, the girl I loved. It was my turn to stop the storm.

"When this whole thing first started, I filmed your every move while you were researching. I have footage of everything you said, everything you wrote, even direct shots of pages in that cuneiform book," I told her. "Remember? Sometimes I'd just set the camera down and let it roll while you talked at me. Weeks of your research are captured on film. I know you can still use it."

"Sam - "

"Then Zip can extract data from those drives. Alister and Amanda will share their notes, we'll talk to all those archaeologists you've been contacting, we'll comb through Roth's journal, we'll sleep at the fucking Birckbeck Library with Alvin if we have to - "

"That's not enough."

"Yes, it is," I said firmly. "It can be."

"Sam, that's six weeks of hard work, just up in smoke," Lara insisted sadly. "Not even counting the years of Roth's research I lost. It's _over_."

"It's _not_ over," I said fiercely, plunging my hand into the equipment bag and pulling out the picture of Lara and her parents. I shoved it at her, knowing full well that there was no way she was going to just live out the rest of her life without finding out the truth. It was just how she was. Why else would she nearly kill herself in a fire rescuing these things? Rescuing these pictures? "It's not over. Look at this picture. You're _Lara-fucking-Croft_ , the Croftiest of all the Crofts! A person who never gives up, even when literal monsters are clawing at her. Even when it's just you against the world. Even when your best friend doubts you. You're a survivor, Lara, and you have survived way worse than this. I know you, and if you drop this now, if you don't follow through…"

She stared at me wordlessly.

"...then you're not Lara."

"You...want me to do this? Even if it's dangerous and could get me killed?" she asked. "I distinctly remember having a huge row with you over this. This is the first time we're talking in two days!"

"I wish you didn't have to do this," I admitted. "I wish you were a normal person living a normal life. I wish your biggest concern was work deadlines or cholesterol or whatever. But that's not who you are. If you let this go, you're never going to forgive yourself. I understand that now."

Lara pursed her lips. "I thought an intruder setting the house on fire would have made you even more _against_ this."

I moved the bag of stuff down to the floor. She had saved the only things that mattered to her - her research, and the people she cared about. No matter what, she needed both those things to be the person I'd fallen in love with.

"No. I get you now, Lara. I really do."

It seemed silly to compare my offer for a job promotion to all the crazy shit swirling around Lara right then, but at the most basic level, the comparison was there. I was sure now that I was not meant to be my father. And I was just as sure that Lara was meant to follow the footsteps of hers. I could never chain myself to a desk, and I definitely wasn't going to let Lara do it to herself, either.

"I'm going to help you," I added. "We're not pushing each other away anymore. You're stuck with me, okay? I'm going to read all your damn books, study all those stupid cuneiform letters and I'm going to start hitting the gym because if there's one thing I've learned all these years it's that upper body strength and good cardio is very important in keeping up with you."

The storm was gone from her eyes, leaving behind what appeared to be a ray of hope.

"Thank you," she murmured again.

"There's nothing to thank me for."

I was suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that she still had both her arms resting on my shoulders, and her face had gotten awfully close to mine. Her cheeks were still puffy and her lips were trembling, but I had never seen anything more inviting in my _life._

My hands wrapped around hers, to guide them off my shoulders, but instead she grasped them. It startled me, and I felt like maybe I should move away, but the part of me that wanted this _so badly_ was overpowering.

She kissed me first.

I was pretty certain of that. But I kissed her back so completely that it felt like we could both share the blame for this one.

Our lips fit perfectly, and when I pulled her in, I felt her smile against me. She exhaled softly, catching her breath, before peering into my eyes. I don't know what she saw in them, but she seemed to realize that I was utterly and completely into this. She chuckled.

"Sam…"

"Yeah." I didn't know exactly what I was answering, but for Lara, the answer would always be yes.

I pushed her back on the seat and straddled across her lap. Hesitantly, I looked to make sure that it was okay. Thank the Lord, there was no doubt on her face.

Our lips met again, her hand burying itself in my hair and my mouth creeping open for more.

Yeah, no, I would take credit for this one.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** Well, that escalated quickly lol._


	10. Day 42

**Day 42**

* * *

"It's not you. It's me."

Lara and I raised one eyebrow each.

"Really? That's what you're going with?" I snorted.

We were dropping Reyes off at the airport. She wasn't supposed to leave for another two days, but she had quietly switched her flight to an earlier one, and refused to let me pay the extra charges. We didn't even realize she'd done it until we barged into her hotel room last night trying to drag her to dinner, and found her packing her things.

"Okay...it...it _is_ you." Reyes grimaced at us. "That came out wrong. Look. No matter what, I...you guys are my friends. Like family, kind of."

I nudged Lara in the ribs with my elbow.

"She loves us," I whispered.

"I do not!" Reyes said contrarily. "I...have some concern...with regards to your welfare. It would matter to me if, you know, something bad happened to either of you. So...don't let anything happen. Because...your well-beings are of interest to me."

I leaned closer to Lara's ear. "That means she _really_ loves us."

She rolled her eyes. "I have a teenage daughter and somehow _you_ two are the biggest pains in my ass."

I put a hand to my heart and pretended to sigh dreamily. Lara pressed her lips together, forcing herself not to chuckle.

"I just...I need to think about Alisha. I want you guys to stay safe and I wish I could help you more, but I have to make sure no harm comes to her. And that means I have to keep myself out of trouble," Reyes sighed. "It's nothing personal. Other than all the, _you know,_ this was actually a really nice vacation. Alisha would have enjoyed it, too. I'm not trying to run away from _you_. I'm trying to distance myself from…"

She raised her arms, thickly bandaged from the night of the fire.

"If something had happened to me - "

"We understand," Lara interrupted. "It's okay, Reyes."

"Seriously. Lara, I don't blame you for anything. I promise," Reyes insisted. "Maybe if I were young like you, with no kid, I don't know. But now, I can't risk it. I can't stay here, and I can't hang around you."

"It's okay," I echoed Lara.

"If there's anything I can do to help you from New York, you let me know, all right?"

Lara put a hand on her shoulder. "Definitely. Send Alisha and your sister our regards."

"Thank you again for Roth's inheritance."

"Thank you for _taking_ it. Or, well, half of it."

Reyes grinned awkwardly for a moment before finally pulling up the handle on her luggage.

"Okay, I'm gonna - "

"Wait, wait." I spread my arms wide open. "Bring it in, ladies. Bring it in."

Both Reyes and Lara groaned as I forced them into a group hug. I felt them both struggling a little to get away, which just spurred me to squeeze them tighter. Eventually I let them go and they both shoved at me, though they both looked pleased doing it.

"Best of luck, you two. With whatever you guys end up doing." She pointed a finger back and forth between us. "And whatever y'all got going on here."

Lara blushed. "We - I - "

"Uh-huh," Reyes smirked. "I promise I'll keep in touch, this time."

We watched her until she disappeared in the throng at airport security check, and then made our way back to the car.

"I'm going to miss her grumpy arse," Lara said as she slid into my passenger seat and clicked on her seatbelt. I started the car and navigated the confusing airport lot, trying to find the exit.

"Yeah…"

The two of us stayed awkwardly silent as I drove around, Reyes's parting words ringing in our heads.

After we had left the hospital, we checked into a nice hotel and spent the rest of the weekend salvaging things from the house and putting stuff into storage. The work on the house would take nearly three weeks, according to the contractor, and we wouldn't be able to go back once we were finished removing our belongings. Then the police kept calling us, the insurance vultures kept trying to find loopholes, and the press began to swarm. That kept us pretty busy, and extremely exhausted. Because of everything going on, we both kept conking out early and sleeping long hours.

So we never actually got a minute to talk about the fact that we had made out in the back of my car.

I finally found the exit to the motorway and was just about to say something, when suddenly my phone began to ring from the cupholder. Lara practically jumped to get it, saved by the bell, so to speak.

"Unknown caller," Lara read from the screen. She held it up so I could see. It was definitely a London number that looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it.

"Answer it for me?"

"Really? You don't know who it is."

"I kinda recognize the number, but I'm not sure where from."

Lara shrugged and swiped the green phone icon. When I reached for it, she slapped my hand away and put on the speaker. She never let me talk on the phone while driving, unless it was on speaker. For a human disaster magnet, she was awfully keen on my driving safety.

"' _El-lo!"_ I answered into the phone, using a deep-throated, confusing accent mix of Scottish and Australian. Lara practically stuffed a fist in her mouth to stop herself from laughing. She recognized my fake phone voice, most commonly used when I drunkenly gave my number to a guy at a bar I didn't _really_ want to talk with. _"Cehn ah 'elp ya, mate?"_

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number."

He hung up, but I had recognized his voice.

Mr. Walter Pullman, of the BBC. In all the commotion, I had completely forgotten that I was expected to give him an answer about the promotion today.

I blanched and Lara looked at me curiously.

"Who was that?"

"I, um, I may have been extended a job promotion at the BBC that I was supposed to follow up with today."

She beamed at me. "That's great!"

"Is it?" I frowned.

"Of course it is! I always knew you were the best, Sam. You're so good at what you do. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed. I'm so _proud_ of you!"

I bit my lip. She didn't understand the whole story, and frankly, it felt kind of embarrassing to just come out and tell her the promotion was only because of my family name. Especially if being proud of me meant looking at me like _that._

"It's...well, it's a desk job. An assistant gig, full-time. Full benefits. First step on the track to the executive big time."

Lara faltered before looking away from me and out her window.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"That's...I mean, that's how your father and uncle started out, isn't it? And look at them now. They practically rule the media world."

"Right…" I didn't know why I couldn't bring myself to say any more. Maybe it was because I was so shocked that Lara seemed to actually want this for me. Jonah and Zip had been so sure it wasn't for me, and I had all but made up my mind that it was something I would never want to do with my life.

"You'd be good at it," she said, almost monotonously. "It's practically in your blood. And I'm sure you'll still have some artistic involvement in things. I mean, if you're the boss one day, you can do anything you want, right?"

The one whose opinion mattered the most was pushing me towards this. And being _totally_ weird about it.

"I guess? It would probably be a couple years of me fetching coffee and answering phones. Then maybe I'll be doing some paperwork. A couple more years of that and maybe I'll break into the upper offices where the real party is," I said dryly. "I better stock up on pantsuits!"

The phone began to ring again. Mr. Pullman, evidently trying to give me another shot. Lara snatched it away and rejected the call.

"Hey!"

"Okay, wait," she winced. "Maybe think about this a minute."

 _There_ she was. My girl.

"Yousaid - "

"I'm an idiot!"

"Lara - ?"

The phone rang again and Lara was about ready to throw it out the window.

"Please don't take that job, Sam," she said sincerely. "It's not you, it's never been you, and I can't even imagine if it one day became you. Come on, _pantsuits?_ "

I raised a teasing eyebrow. "I would have thought you'd be all for it. Safe behind a desk, stable job with benefits that keeps me in one place. That's always been what you wanted, right? Keeping me safe?"

"Of course I want you safe, but that job would _change_ you. It would be like what those awful people at SeaWorld do to their Shamus. They confine them in these tiny, cramped spaces, no room to grow or think freely. The Shamu just starts to deteriorate physically, mentally, emotionally - "

I scowled at her. "Oh, my God. Did you watch _Blackfish?_ "

She grinned sheepishly. "Research got a lot harder for me while we weren't speaking to each other. When I needed a break and couldn't go to you… I just…sort of…"

"I _told_ you not to watch that!"

"Well, I did."

"I _told_ you it would just upset you!"

"Well, it did!" Lara shivered at the memory. "But that's not the point. If you take the job with the BBC you are going to end up like that Shamu with the folded-down fins! And before you whine about how I'm calling you a whale, because I know you're going to, it is actually quite a good metaphor for this situation!"

The blush was faintly spreading to her cheeks now, and she was amazingly adorable. I had to mess with her a little bit more.

"So you're comparing me to a whale."

"Sam!"

"You know they're called orcas, right? Shamu is a name, not an animal."

The phone went off a fourth time and Lara shut it down completely and jammed it in the glove compartment.

"Whoa, careful!" I protested. "I don't have a hell-proof iphone cover like you do!"

"Why even bother using those super-thin cases?"

"They look nice. _Your_ phone always looks like it's about to be launched into space."

She pinched my arm to get me back on track.

"Listen, you're the most vibrant person I've ever met in my life and that job - business meetings and reports and sucking up to some CEO to make your way up a corporate ladder - that will take more out of you than Himiko ever could have."

This time I fully intended to stop playing around, to calm her down and tell her I had already decided to pass on the job, but she just barreled on.

"You belong where the story is. I can dig up the past, but you're the one that makes it _interesting_. You make it relevant, you turn it into something that people actually want to _know_. History is just this great big dust heap, and I may be the one to brush it off, but you're the one who _polishes_ it."

"Lara, I - "

"You don't belong in an office. You belong out there, with a camera, a vantage point, and three thousand years worth of humanity's greatest works, ideas, and achievements to record and share."

She was coming just short of saying it. I could see the struggle in her, and the embarrassment.

"You belong with _me._ "

" _Lara!"_ I interrupted sharply enough to slow her roll. "I wasn't going to take it."

Her mouth opened and no words came out for a good ten seconds.

"You...you weren't?"

"No!"

She narrowed her eyes at me. "So you just let me ramble on, like I'm some sort of mental - "

"You were being really cute," I admitted. "And super inspirational. You've gotten really good at giving those speeches."

"Jesus, Sam." Lara threw her head back in exasperation. "You had me thinking you were just going to lock yourself up in a building for the rest of your life!"

"Of course not," I said gently. When she didn't say anything, I bumped her with my elbow to try and get her to relax. She had gotten really worked up about it and I was starting to feel guilty. "Because of what you said. The Shamu thing."

There was hope in her smile. "But...not _just_ because of the Shamu thing?"

"Not just because of the Shamu thing," I confirmed.

She absorbed what I said and just sat back in her seat, the cogs turning in her head. We drove in a comfortable silence for a few more minutes until we arrived at our hotel. Lara tentatively returned my phone to me, thankfully not cracked or broken, and I turned it on.

"I have to at least _tell_ him I don't want the promotion," I told her.

The concierge wished us a good day as we got into the elevator and I pushed the button for the tenth floor.

"Are you gonna make us downgrade to a regular room now that Reyes is gone?" I asked, mostly just kidding. I hoped she didn't. When we had first arrived, I booked the Royal Suite and Lara was _aghast._ She claimed it was a waste of money, especially if we splurged for three weeks. She barely even wanted the Deluxe suite, but the allure of a hot tub got her. Plus, we figured Reyes deserved a little pampering after she'd gotten injured at our house. We let her have the master with the queen bed all to herself. Lara and I had shared the connecting room with two of our own double beds.

"Maybe we can switch tomorrow? One more night with the spa would be nice," she said, raising her arms over her head to work the kinks out of her shoulders. I watched as her muscles stretched and her shirt came up a little, revealing her little belly button on top of some increasingly defined abs.

I felt my face heat up.

"Is it just me, or is this the slowest elevator ever?"

She gave me the oddest look, but it finally stopped on our floor. I nearly leapt out and jammed the key card into the door.

"Are you all right?"

I held the door open for her first and let her sit down on her bed before speaking.

"No. I…" I took a deep breath, my mind racing for something to say. There was nothing left to say, though. Nothing except, "Lara, what are we doing?"

She bit her lip as I bravely sat next to her and, instead of looking at each other, we stared at our reflections in the vanity mirror. Our eyes met there.

"Honestly? I'm as lost as you are."

That wasn't particularly reassuring. I had spent my entire adult life looking to her for guidance. She was both the practical one that had Gatorade and Advil ready when you woke up hungover before final exams, and the impractical one that somehow just knew what to do when you found yourself hanging off Mount Kilimanjaro by a bungee cord. But today, in this mirror, we were both utterly unprepared and facing the same uncharted territory.

"Whatever happens, best friends forever, right?" I asked hopefully. She took my hand, unabashedly.

"Always. You _are_ my best friend. But God, even that sounds stupid. You are so much _more_ than just that," she said ardently. "Sam, you were always the most important thing to me in the world, and that was even before I started to have…"

My breath hitched. "Yeah?"

"You know…" She motioned at her chest, as if she were a confused child with minimal vocabulary.

"Feelings?" I dared suggest. "Feelings for me."

"Right."

I didn't actually know, _per se,_ until this exact moment. Her confirmation made it feel like I had been holding my breath all that time and was just now allowed to gasp for air.

I squeezed her hand in attempt to be reassuring, but it was mostly for myself. To convince myself that even though everything was now out in the open, she was still there with me.

"Now what?" I wondered. "We've come a long way."

"And have a long way, still," Lara agreed. "We've been through a lot, but nothing that compares to this. It's terrifying, Sam. Everything we've ever done, I never doubted that you'd be with me in the end. Even in Yamatai, I knew I'd get you back. I knew that no force in the universe would keep me from you. That's what kept me going, you know."

"I know."

"But this, I mean, if this didn't work out and we broke up - "

"Why would we break up?" I blurted. Maybe I sounded too over-eager, but my God, I had been _yearning_ for this for days. Longer probably. Definitely longer. Since I felt the last traces of Himiko drain from my body, I knew deep down Lara was going to be my everything.

"Well, have either of us ever been in a relationship where we _didn't_ break up?"

Okay, that was fair.

"Counter-point: I have never been in a relationship with _you_ ," I said. "Except this one right here. Whatever it is, I know that the two of us can endure anything."

Lara bit her lip. It was still so strange to see her unsure of something. She was always so logic-oriented, so reliant on evidence and research. So concerned with losing people she loved.

"If you want me to appeal to your nerdy science-y side..." I said cheekily. "Statistical evidence has shown that we can survive all things natural _and_ supernatural. Literally."

That brought up a smile. "I could never lose you, Sam."

"You never will."

"If we do this…"

I took her hand and turned her so she was finally looking at me, and not my reflection. She blinked, her eyes watery and frightened. No one else would have guessed that this was a person who had killed to survive. Killed so _I_ could survive.

"I've already been doing this," I told her. "For a while now, I think."

Her eyes changed when I said that. I saw her compassion and confidence. I saw Lara Croft.

"Me too."

My lips pressed right on top of her grin. It was probably an enormously bad idea that we were on a bed, but there were just some things that couldn't be stopped. Like Lara slowly laying back on the rough quilt and my crawling over her. Or our mouths melding and our bodies pressing together. Or my tongue finding its way to a spot behind her ear that made her gasp. Or her hands running under my shirt and up my stomach until her fingers grazed the bottom edge of my bra.

Her abrupt snort, though. That did kinda slam the brakes on us.

"What is it?" I asked, my words being spoken mostly into the hollow of her collarbone, where I had been kissing my way down. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, God."

I lifted myself up on my hands so I could look down at her.

"What?"

She looked so happy I almost lost myself.

"Sam, I am _so bloody gay_."

"Uh...?"

"I suspected I might be," she continued. "I always found Amanda more attractive than Alister, for example."

My eyebrow quirked. "That's not gay, that's common sense."

"I meant her breasts."

I groaned. "Jesus, Lara, you are _killing_ the mood right now."

"Oh! Oh, sorry. Let me fix it."

She looked at me so _wickedly_ that I almost moaned again. My demure, posh and proper English aristocrat Lady Croft flipped me onto my back and straddled my hips.

"Wait, wait," I realized, breaking out in a cold sweat. I had completely forgotten.

"Now who's killing the mood?"

"Remember, Dr. Kimura told us no...uh, strenuous activity for six weeks."

Lara smirked. "Well, _someone's_ being rather ambitious."

"I'm serious!"

"Sam, we jumped out of an exploding house and fell from a tree."

"Yeah, we're lucky, but…"

Lara sighed and sat back on my thighs. She pulled her shirt up, so I could see the jagged scar healing on her abs. That certainly did not help my situation, especially when she grabbed my hand and placed it there. My thumb traveled over the raised tissue, dark pink against her pale skin. Her muscles tensed under my touch, and I saw her swallow hard.

"Does this feel like something you need to worry about?" she managed to say.

"Uh, I mean, I'm a little worried that I'll never be able to take my hands off you?"

Lara laughed and let my hand stay as she climbed back over me. "It has to have been six weeks by now. I've finished my antibiotics forever ago and I haven't had any pain."

I grabbed my phone and scrolled up in my calendar app until I found the old appointment with Dr. Kimura, way back when we were still in Japan.

"Wow, it's been forty-two days exactly." I whistled. "This has been some six weeks."

"I know, I was right there with you."

I grinned at her. "You always are."

Our lips crashed together and the fingers I had on her scar tickled their way down to circle her navel. I brushed against the top of her jeans with every revolution and she hissed, the sound sending a jolt straight down my body. I felt her slowly raise my top until it was pulled over my bra.

Then she stopped. Lara's tongue slowed and I pulled from the kiss to look on in amusement.

"Hit a speed bump, did you?"

Lara blushed adorably, eyes resting firmly on my clothed boobs.

"Two of them."

I had to chuckle.

"It's okay, I'll teach you." I assured her. "It doesn't even have to be today. We have plenty of time, there's no need to rush. And we don't have to jump straight to the advanced class yet. Let's get the prerequisites out of the way."

The poor girl was basically a virgin at this. And the way I felt as I watched her, it was almost like I was one too. I'd had the privilege of being with women before, but not this woman. Not the _best_ one.

"Good thing I'm an excellent pupil." She smiled gratefully.

My hands found her hips and just kind of held them in place, instead of creeping around to grab what they really wanted. I didn't want her to move away quite yet, but I also didn't want to overstep any boundaries too early.

Still, though.

"You bet this glorious ass, you are."

* * *

Later, as I came back to the room from a quick snack run, I found Lara on her stomach on the bed. She was writing in her leatherbound notebook, barely even aware that I had like five boxes of Jaffa Cakes with me. I didn't say anything, because it struck me hard that she looked really, really beautiful with her face scrunched up in concentration like that. Her hair, now outrageously long because she _still_ never got it trimmed, spilled over her shoulders like a waterfall. The sun was setting, so the orange light from our westward facing window illuminated her, made her look like she was glowing.

I dropped the Jaffa Cakes and dug through my things, looking for my camera. This would be one of the greatest shots of Lara I would ever take. The bright archaeological genius, innocently scribbling away like a schoolgirl in her room as darkness fell behind her. I almost wanted to climb into bed with her and start braiding her hair as she told me stories.

But I just let the camera roll.

"You're wasting an awful lot of memory just to film me write," she said finally, not looking up, but grinning.

"I was hoping it was something dirty."

She made a deprecating noise. "Hardly."

"Well, I'm a thousand percent less interested now. Come on, I have Jaffa Cakes. Let's watch something On Demand. The concierge said we get a complimentary movie for every third night we book this room."

The mention of Jaffa Cakes almost made her look up.

"One minute. I just need to jot down some ideas before I lose them."

"Ideas about what?" I sat in my bed next to hers, so I could keep a good distance for the shot.

"Pomegranates."

I made a face. "If you had a hankering for anti-oxidants, you could have told me while I was out and I would have gotten you one."

She laughed. "Pomegranates in the context of myth and legend."

"Ah, _mythica_ l pomegranates. Now it adds up." I nodded. "You only eat garbage, I was kind of surprised you even knew what a pomegranate was."

"Of course I do! Pomegranates were pretty widespread across civilizations and symbolize many things to many cultures. They're used fairly prominently in representations of fertility, for example."

"That's cool…" I vaguely remembered the themes that Lara had been researching before the fire. Mostly stuff about the end of the world, doom and gloom and such. "Although fertility was definitely not what you had been reading about before."

"Not quite, but pomegranates are just as widely known assymbols of death. The ancient Greeks literally thought of them as the fruit of the dead. It's a curious dichotomy."

" _Curious,"_ I ribbed playfully. But now it made even more sense for Lara to be interested in them. There was _death_ involved.

"You know the story of Persephone, don't you?"

"Duh. Hades the god of the dead is a dick and steals Demeter's daughter, Persephone, away to the underworld to marry. Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, so if you fuck with her, you starve. Lord Zeus realizes his family is crazy and run amok, so he forces Hades to give Persephone back. He does, but not before he tricks her into eating some pomegranate seeds which, for whatever weird god-reason, means she's tethered to the Underworld part of the year. So Persephone winds up part-time goddess of the spring, when Demeter is happy to have her back and lets things grow, and part-time queen of the underworld, when she has to go back and Demeter gets depressed and forces everyone to deal with winter and Ugg boots."

I couldn't even describe how hot the look was that Lara gave me.

"So that's what does it for you, huh?" I winked. "Ancient mythology drama?"

She blushed. "I'm just impressed."

"I'll keep that in mind."

She had to shyly turn away from me and the camera for a moment before getting back to business.

"The abundance of seeds in each fruit is what links them with fertility, but those same seeds have the ability to quite literally bleed red through the skin, which is where the more sinister associations come from."

"If only they knew about polyphenols, huh?"

"What I'm interested in is their involvement in myths of cyclical deities. Not just Persephone's cycling of seasons, but also the comparative myth of Rimmon in Syria, whose name literally _meant_ pomegranate, Osiris in Egypt, the ancient Sumerian Tammuz, the Babylonian Ishtar. The descent and return from the underworld of deities is almost universal. The cycle of death and rebirth is practically a staple in religious texts, and can be considered loosely analogous to the pomegranate and it's symbolism of death and new life. You know?"

"Well, I do now."

Lara had sat up in her bed and was talking excitedly, thrilled that she was getting this chance to go completely Nerd-O-Matic on me.

"Especially when you consider that pomegranates were called apples by other cultures, which opens up a whole new - "

"Wait...apples?"

"Yes, apples. There were language barriers everywhere in the ancient world, and the pomegranate was a very specific fruit. Traders or invaders or other foreigners that came upon the fruit usually just used their own generic word for it. The word 'apple' applied to almost any rounded fruit with seeds inside it. People still do this today."

Something about this bothered me, but I couldn't put my figure out what it was.

"So when you hear about golden apples in legends or poisoned apples in fairy tales, that forbidden fruit tradition has descended down from literally thousands of years of pomegranate symbolism. Even in the story of Adam and Eve, the first original sin was committed over a pomegranate from the Garden of Eden."

"That's…uh..."

She frowned at me. "What's the matter?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I feel like I'm forgetting something, I just don't know what."

Lara picked up the notebook she'd been writing in. "That's why I'm keeping one of these. So I don't forget anything."

"You know, you have a new laptop," I teased. "And an iPad. Who actually _writes_ anymore?"

"This is a journal," she informed me. "Not a _blog_."

"You have a journal now?"

"My father had one. Roth had one. I thought it was about time I started keeping a proper one of my own."

Her earnest expression, in this sunset lighting, made me want her so very badly.

I paused the camera and went over to kiss her at the corner of her smile, and again on her chin and cheek, until she dropped the journal and captured my lips. Before I knew it, I was in bed with her again, feeling her body move over mine, and I was so overwhelmed by her warmth that I didn't even care when the back of my head hit the headboard with a loud _thunk_. She did, though, and she laughed into my mouth. When she released me, I was breathless.

I felt her hand travel to the back of my head and tangle in my hair. Whatever had been bothering me before was completely gone from my mind.

"All right?"

"I don't know. Trying kissing me again."

She snickered and helped me back up.

"Want to hear the introduction?" she asked, her eyes glinting with mischief. She knew exactly what she'd done to me, and what I wanted. Lara was _teasing_ me.

"Not, like, right this second," I said weakly. What I really wanted was more making out, maybe a little bit more touching.

She grinned evilly at me and granted me one more peck on the lips before opening up to the first page of her journal and handing it to me.

I read the first entry and rolled my eyes.

"You have like, _zero_ artistic flair," I snorted, grabbing her pen. "Thank God you're hot, Lara."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It sounds like a stuffy archaeologist wrote it."

"A stuffy archaeologist _did_ write it - hang on! What do you think you're doing!?"

I twisted my body away so she couldn't reach as I wrote something above her uninspired passage. Then I signed my name and doodled a little heart and smiley face. She snatched it back from me.

"What did you write?"

"A better opening, so it at least sounds better leading in."

Lara smirked and sat back, the expression softening as she looked over my addition. Then, she read it aloud.

" _Throughout history, the boldest have dared to go further. They risked death and in doing so live on forever. What drives these few to the ends of the earth? The desire to discover something more, the search for something greater. The world is full of unanswered questions. Beyond all limits, all reason, the answers await..."_

The moment of silence between us was heavy and meaningful, until I realized something.

"Crap."

"What?"

I grabbed my camera and turned it back on.

"Could you read that again, just like how you did?"

* * *

 **~*THE END*~**

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:**_ _I didn't mean to get political or anything about SeaWorld or 'Blackfish'. A couple of chapters ago I googled "Top Documentaries of 2013", intending for Sam to talk about them at some point with someone, I don't remember. The scene never happened, but I did remember two movies from the list - 'Blackfish' and 'One Direction: This Is Us'. I figured 'Blackfish' had the better metaphor lol._

 _Also:_

 _OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDD I FINISHED A FIC AHHHHHHHH!_

 _This is the first time I ever completed a multi-chaptered fic before in my LIFE. You don't even understand how proud of myself I am right now. I mean, love it, hate it, whatever. I FINISHED it. I feel so good :-D Tell me what y'all think, I'm prolly gonna go back and fix little mistakes here and there at some point (English language was never my greatest strength) but wow, this is it. I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Because believe you me, writing this shit was a PLEASURE!_

 _P.S. I may or may not have made this glaringly obvious, but I do intend to write a sequel for this at some point. Or rather, this is the prequel for another fic I have more than a few ideas about. I wanted this to primarily be about Sam realizing she has the hots for Lara, obviously, but I also wanted to set a whole new stage. The cloudy beginnings of a mysterious new adventure, a blossoming new relationship, Lara learning the truth about her parents, Sam realizing that she is no more cut out for normal life than her best friend is, and a new cast of old friends that I tried characterizing a little bit here before they appear again in the next fic._

 _Basically, this whole thing really was just a big huge 10 chapter prologue lol. Oh well. As for the follow-up, I'll have to decide where to go with it after I finish_ **Rise of the Tomb Raider** _and update this with an epilogue, probably. But whatever happens in that game, I'm Sam/Lara for LIFE. No matter what, we'll always have fandom, right?_

 _AGHHHHH I STILL CAN'T GET OVER THAT I FINISHED A FIC THO LOL_


	11. Day 72 - EPILOGUE

**DAY 72**

* * *

"Endurance Studios," Lara read off the listing at the front of the building. "Suite 1C."

"Ta-Da!"

She gave me a look. "Sam, what is this?"

I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the office building. Truthfully, the word "suite" was a little generous for the space I was renting, but it would do. Most of the work could be done from home anyway, it just seemed more professional to have a separate business address.

She let me shove her into the elevator.

"Honestly, Sam, using the lift to go up one floor is just - ".

Lara didn't even get a chance to finish lecturing me as the doors were barely open when I excitedly swung her around the corner. There was a handwritten post-it stuck to the wall with "Endurance Studios" scribbled on it in black marker.

"Okay, wait. Hang on." She stared at me, holding my wrist so I didn't just barge inside. This was probably the longest she'd ever seen me go without talking, but it was supposed to be _exciting_. The occasion warranted a little dramatic embellishment. She could at least just pretend to go with it. "Did you seriously just start your own film company?"

Grinning, I opened the door and pulled her in. The tiny space was furnished with a single desk, two office chairs, and a large newly-bearded man crouched over a laptop.

"Jonah!" Lara exclaimed happily, as Jonah scooted over in a chair to hug her tightly. "What are you doing here?"

"I've recently gained employment at an up and coming indie film company." He winked over at me. I plopped down in the other chair and soaked in the utter confusion coming off my girlfriend.

Girlfriend. I had never called anyone that before, and I was freaking loving it. It had take us a month of avoiding the label, but a few days ago the barista at a cafe had asked Lara if "her girlfriend" wanted whipped cream on her latte. She had stared at him, startled, then at me. I don't know what she saw on my face other than befuddlement, but somehow she was able to turn right back to that barista and say 'Yes.'

I, of course, said, 'No, oh my God babe, my double-chin!'

And she was all, 'What are you even talking about?'

Anyway, long story short, the barista kind of unknowingly officiated our formal girlfriend relationship and I left him a large tip. I was going ahead with my nefarious plan anyway, obviously I loved Lara more than anything and there was no question she was warm for _my_ form, but the fact that we were officially _going steady_ now just made 'Operation: Pomegranate' all the more special.

"Welcome to the grand opening of Endurance Studios!" I finally exclaimed. I patted on my lap, indicating that she should sit on it, even though I knew she wouldn't in front of Jonah. Lara was never big on PDA, although I would never stop teasing her with it.

She instead leaned back on the desk and rolled her eyes at me in amusement.

"So dramatic. This is a closet with a laptop in it."

"Everyone has to start somewhere," I said, not letting her harsh my vibes. "This was always kind of a dream of mine. With a small independent studio, I can give myself so much freedom! I can distance myself from Nishimura Entertainment and do my own thing, you know?"

Lara sighed. "Sam, you know I one hundred percent support you in everything you do, particularly with your career. This is absolutely the best thing for you, and I'll help you however I can. But why do I have a feeling there's more to this than you're telling me?"

"Because there is?" Jonah ratted me out. I kicked the adjustment bar under his desk chair and he grunted as it sank towards the floor.

 _"Sam."_

I snorted. "All right, all right. I wasn't lying about this being my dream, but it's also to help you out, Lara. I know you've been having trouble securing those permits with the Libyan government."

Her research had led her to smack dab in the middle of the Libyan desert where, theoretically, there was an undiscovered mystery ruin that would blow her whole investigation wide open. Unfortunately, with the all crises and civil war and stuff, those guys just did not want to deal with a rich white girl running around their desert willy-nilly.

Lara frowned. "That's my problem, not yours."

"Well, I did a little research of my own. They won't let you conduct an archaeological expedition to your little ruins there without miles of red tape and hoops to jump through. Unless you're willing to wait _months_ , getting a permit is pretty much a bust."

"I told you, I'll figure it out. I've been looking up a few contacts of my father's."

"Contacts that are, shall we say, a tad _unsavory_? People of questionable loyalty who would sell us out to the highest bidder. I know you're pretty loaded now, babe, but what happens if you're not the highest bidder?"

She bit her lip. "That's a fair point. Still, though..."

I got up and sat cross-legged on the desk next to her. If that amazing butt of hers wasn't going to make itself comfortable in my lap, I could at least sidle up next to her and get some chin-on-shoulder action.

"Soooo, did you know to get a permit to film a documentary on location in Libya, pretty much all you need is a registered film production company and a signed contract?"

Jonah ceremonially unfolded the document, bearing the official seal of the Department of Arts and Media. Lara gaped at it, him, and me in rapid succession.

"You're welcome," I prompted her, grinning.

"But - but - " she sputtered, taking the letter from Jonah. "But…"

"You were right, Sam." Jonah grinned. "We did break her."

I worked my arms around her waist and waited as she read the letter.

"Pro-tip: Nerds are way easier to negotiate with than warlords and dictators."

"This is _brilliant!_ " she gushed. "I can't believe I didn't think of it!"

I bit her shoulder jokingly. "Hey. I can think of stuff too."

My little nip got her even more flustered. She squirmed a little, but made no effort to distance herself from my grasp. Prim and proper Lady Croft couldn't deny that she loved it.

"I know that. It's just, I've practically been clawing at the walls trying to get into that bloody desert."

"You're _welcome_ ," I repeated cheekily.

"Thank you so much," she said finally, blushing. "This changes everything. Sam, I…"

She swallowed. It was on the tip of the poor girl's tongue, but I forgave her for not being able to say it out loud quite yet.

"Thank you _both_. God only knows how she roped you into this, Jonah."

He shrugged. "Sam's degree is in filmmaking, not starting a company."

Lara raised an eyebrow. "What's that got to do with you?"

"Oh, I have a business degree from Hawaii Pacific University."

"You _what?_ Since when?!" I didn't blame her for being surprised. Jonah didn't exactly strike anyone as the business type. But the two of us had this conversation months ago on the Endurance, during a lull in the excitement.

"Since my discharge from the army!" he explained. "Class of 2009. My grandmother wanted me to get a degree, and I figured a business degree would help with her restaurant. I guess it did, but I haven't really used it much since then."

"So he's the vice president of Endurance Studios!" I clapped him on the back. "Also, assistant cameraman and boom mic operator, since he got so good at it while we were on the ship."

Lara looked uneasy. "Jonah, I'm not sure you fully understand what you'd be getting into."

"Nope," he shrugged. "But I'd like to hear you out and make that call for myself."

I had made a point not to share Lara's story or tell him about her research. Jonah was one of very few people Lara and I trusted in the world, but I wanted her to know that this was still her legend in the making. My job, as dutiful and committed new girlfriend, was to support her.

And, well, if that meant start up a film company for use as a front to sneak into Libya and bring Jonah over from halfway around the world to help me do it, then so be it. Operation: Pomegranate was a go.

Lara glared at me.

"I originally did just want him to help with my start-up," I said sheepishly at her expression. "I didn't tell him anything, I swear, he just kind of knew something was up."

It was true. She and I both knew how creepily intuitive Jonah was.

"Well, that figures." Lara snorted.

"Lara, it's okay if - " Jonah was cut off as his cell phone went off in his pocket. He peered down at the screen. " - this our registration lawyer. I gotta take this."

"I still can't believe you did this," Lara said, as he took the call. Although the smile creeping on her face said that she wasn't going to bite my head off for bringing Jonah in. The fact that she loved the hell out of my plan was probably helping her come to terms with that.

"Of all the things I've pulled on you, _this_ is something you can't believe?" I smirked. "Pulling an entire film studio out of my ass?"

"You didn't have to do this for me."

"Hey, hey, I did it for me too," I insisted. "The world doesn't revolve around you, _Croft._ "

One look from those big brown eyes and the truth was drawn right out of me.

Definitely, undoubtedly, my world absolutely revolved around her. Of course she had something to do with this. I mean, I was going to jumpstart my career at some point or another - I was tired of being in my father's shadow, and I did want to do something for myself. I always had the means, but just always lacked the motive.

Said motive grinned at me knowingly and it was just so damn hot when she knew what she did to me.

"Excuse me," Jonah said into the phone. He muted it and pointed at us. "You two, can I get a minute? I can feel your sexual tension from here and it's really distracting."

I grinned and followed Lara outside. When the door was closed behind us, and she made completely sure the hall was empty, she drew me in by the front of my shirt.

" _Thank you,"_ she whispered again, before capturing my lips with hers. I had no idea how long we were there, losing ourselves in that hallway, but it wasn't long enough. Too soon, Lara's hands slowly removed themselves from under my shirt. I nipped at her lip as she pulled away.

"What, that's all I get?" I teased. For a moment there I thought Lara might surprise me, but I practically saw her common sense chase that look out of her eyes. She fumbled a bit before replying.

"Er, yes?"

I laughed. "It's fine."

"Sam, I'm sorry, I know you want to - I mean - "

I took her hand. "I was kidding! I didn't think our first time would be here, jeez."

"I just - I - "

" _Lara,_ you don't need to explain." I hugged her to my chest until I felt her calm down. We had agreed to take things slow, feel out our relationship step by step, and that was absolutely fine with me. "Really, it's okay. And listen, I know I like to tease but if at any point you feel like I'm crossing the line, you stop me."

"Right."

"Promise me."

"Okay."

I tipped her head up by the chin until she was looking directly at me.

"Say it."

"I promise that if you try to take advantage of me I will break your legs and throw you in a river."

"That's what I like to hear." I chortled. "God, I can't even imagine all the weird stuff you must be into."

Lara's eyes darkened and I felt my breath catch in my throat. She was giving me her _look._ The one that always succeeded in making me groan.

"When you've properly discovered my kinks, _you'll_ be the one to warn _me_ if I'm crossing the line."

I swallowed hard like a fucking cartoon character and her eyes immediately lit up again. She laughed and gently pushed me away like she hadn't basically just told me she was into the freaky stuff.

" _Laraaaa…!"_ I whined.

"What's the matter? Don't like the taste of your own medicine?"

I most certainly did not. But I knew she was all talk. My girl was as innocent as they came, and she had to be the most vanilla person I had ever dated. She wouldn't even sit on my lap in front of Jonah. Plus, I'd shared a flat with her when she was with Alister, and I never heard so much as a peep come out of that bedroom. Granted, they didn't always spend the night at our place.

Still. Lara was just messing with me.

Right.

"Seriously, though. Now that I have a way into the country, I can book a flight as soon as I can!" Lara said excitedly, not quite extinguishing the mood, but definitely moving it in the opposite direction than I wanted.

" _We_ can book _flights_ ," I corrected her. Not that she was ever going to shake me away from her again, but now she needed me for her documentary cover. Jonah too, if she really wanted this film crew thing to really be convincing.

"Right, yeah, can't forget my film crew," she acknowledged, though I could see her hesitation. There was still that foolish part of her that wanted to do this all on her own.

"Speaking of a crew…" I'd been giving it some thought and had rehearsed this in my head. I knew Lara would push back hard. "I mean, neither of us are particularly well versed in operating large all-terrain vehicles like the kind we'll need in the desert. And you said yourself that your dad's contacts are shady as hell, so we won't have a lot of options for help down there."

Her eyebrow raised. "I can afford loads of equipment now. GPS and all that. It shouldn't be too much of a problem."

"Electronic equipment," I pointed out. "And neither of us are computer geniuses."

"You're fantastic with that sort of thing."

"Not unless it shoots video, I'm not."

Lara's eyes narrowed. She was starting to see where I was going with this.

"Sam…"

"And Yamatai aside, your field experience in real archaeological expeditions is pretty limited," I continued, before she could shut me down. I could already tell she was preparing to. "We could use someone who spent, say, a year working in an actual desert in Australia."

" _No_ , I am not going to ask Amanda - "

"And who's a bigger nerd about Saharan history than the Professor Of A Thousand Theses - "

Lara backed away from me incredulously. "You did _not_ just suggest I take Alister with me to the desert. _Alister._ Have you met him!?"

"Oh come on. He's obsessed with that crap, just like how you were obsessed with Japanese mythology."

"He's obsessed with _Egyptian_ mythology."

"Including the Egyptian perspective of _Tjehenu_ , a.k.a. _Libya_. And let's not forget that back in the day Libya was part of Egypt in the first place." I let that sink in for a second. "Yes, I do occasionally listen to that boy's ramblings."

"No!" she said firmly anyway. "No, Sam! I don't even want to risk you and Jonah coming along. I refuse to bring the rest of our friends. Jesus, why not just invite Reyes. Better yet, little Alisha, let's drag her along for the party as well!"

I put a hand on her shoulder but she grabbed my wrist and pulled it off.

" _No."_

"Listen, Naya and Zip are both out of a job in two weeks, and they have bills and loans to pay off. Amanda is going fucking insane out of sheer boredom at the university. Even Alister is starting to get restless. This trip - it can help them. It's a thing they could put on their resumes. Most importantly, we have the money to _pay_ them as employees."

"Have you gone completely mental?!" Lara demanded. "You _know_ how dangerous this could be!"

"Not as dangerous if we have people we can trust," I pointed out. "Besides, do you really think we could get away with looking like a documentary crew with just three people?"

Lara bowed her head. "Ugh, this is a bad idea. Do you not remember what happened to our _last_ crew?"

I knew she would respond this way. No amount of therapy would lift the weight of the Endurance off her chest, and she did not want a repeat performance. She'd lost enough friends already.

"Remember what Dr. Cohen said? You didn't cause those storms, they were a surprise to all of us. There was no way you could have predicted - none of that was on _you_ , Lara - "

"Yes, yes, I know, I know. _'It wasn't a navigational suggestion that killed your friends, Lara. It was freak storm and a cult of bad people. Not you'."_ She mimicked Dr. Cohen perfectly, rolling her eyes.

"Do you, though? Do you _know_ that?"

Lara hesitated. "Even if I did, the fact remains that I haven't got the best luck with keeping people close to me alive. Er, present company excluded. God, this time I even _know_ it's going to be dangerous. Who knows how astronomically bad it's going to be, if I already know it's going to be awful beforehand?"

"So, what, your plan is to do everything on your own? Be a one-woman army?"

"Yes!" she replied. And out of anyone else on the planet, she was the only person who could say such a thing and have it possibly be true. But it was much more likely that it wasn't.

"Your father tried pushing everyone away, too," I said softly. "He shut out Roth. He kept secrets from his wife. From his daughter. Everything he'd discovered, his entire legacy was nearly lost. All he left behind were these cryptic secrets he'd never shared with anyone else, and it took the people closest to him _years_ to get his life's work even just started again."

Lara looked like I'd slapped her. I didn't mean to imply that she was following his footsteps, at least not in a disrespectful way, but I wanted to make it clear to her. Having people around would always have risks, but being alone could be even worse.

"Babe, come on…"

The Crofts were about spreading knowledge and discovery above all else, and the idea that her and her father's work could possibly be lost to the world - unshared and forever in the dark - always bothered her. She wanted people to know her journey, because if for some unspeakable reason she failed, someone else could continue it. Someone else could learn from her legacy and change the world themselves.

What was the Croft family name, after all, without a legacy?

She looked away, biting her lip. "I can't do this to them _._ "

I knew she was probably thinking about all I'd been through. But in the end, I found my true path. I started my own company, I had a goal, I had a girlfriend. My life _meant_ something now.

"This isn't only about your family. You saw how the world nearly shat themselves when you found Yamatai and all those artifacts. Who knows what else you're about to discover? Amanda and Alister are aching to be a part of something like that. Zip and Naya are so disillusioned by post-college life, maybe they need a little hope that there's more out there. It may seem like trouble follows you, but Lara, so does _greatness_."

Lara sighed. I let her think to herself for a moment and then took her hand.

"This is stupendously dangerous. You're right to be nervous. But maybe, if we make absolutely sure they understand everything at stake, maybe let them make that call for themselves? Just like Jonah will."

She ran her hand through her hair in frustration.

Then, in a hollow voice, "We can invite them over and see what they think."

I brightened. "A dinner party."

"Not a dinner party."

"We'll do cocktail dresses!"

"No."

"I've been dying to have one of those since we moved into the house!"

A ghost of a smile was sneaking back onto her face.

"We will be completely transparent and tell them in full detail the dangers involved, as well as making it clear that I would not blame them if they decided not to come. In fact it would probably be better for my sanity if they didn't, and it would be better for their safety if - "

"We have to get some good wine," I said, taking her hand. "And some cute sandwiches. And then we sit them down and tell them all those things you said, and no matter what, they're still our friends and we still had a good time."

She exhaled loudly. "Okay...okay. We'll...just _mention_ it to them."

I grinned and gave her a peck on the cheek. We re-entered the office, hand-in-hand, quietly waiting for Jonah to finish up the call. Or at least, Lara did. I could hear him talking about contracts and signatures, so I just sprawled on top of the desk, pretending to moan in boredom.

" - yes, thank you. I'll make sure we have copies. Absolutely. You have my email - " he was saying as he tried to push me away. I let my tongue loll out and dramatically held the back of my hand to my forehead. " - yes. Thank you again. We'll talk Monday. Bye."

Jonah hung up and grabbed a folder to whack me with.

" _Sam,_ that was an important call!" He looked at Lara. "How can you deal with this all the time?"

"Sorry, Jonah. Technically, she's our boss."

He huffed. "I'm starting to think I made a bad decision over here."

I winked over at Lara, who grinned nervously.

"Buddy, just you wait!"

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** Hello again! I know it's been a reaallyyyy long time since I even thought about this fic, but in my defense a lot has changed in my life the past few years. I'll have the summer semester off, though, which means I'll have some spare time to work on the sequel to this and other stuff I've been wanting to write. Crossing my fingers!_

 _Hope you enjoyed the epilogue!_


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